Housing-Rights Group Protests to Council : Oxnard: Via Campesina asks for 5,000 low-income units to be built during the next 30 years. The General Plan calls for about 2,000 such units.

About 250 people protested before the Oxnard City Council on Monday, saying a proposed General Plan does not offer enough low-income housing.

The protesters, members of a housing-rights group called Via Campesina, urged the council to include provisions for at least 5,000 low-income housing units to be built during the next 30 years.

“There is a housing crisis in Oxnard right now like you cannot imagine,” said Leticia Gonzalez, secretary for the nonprofit organization based in Moorpark. “I’m sure that in the four years that it took you to prepare this plan, you didn’t visit the neighborhoods where three or more families are living in houses with two bedrooms.”

Carrying signs and wearing yellow ribbons, the protesters, most of them Latinos, met at Plaza Park in downtown Oxnard and then spoke during the first day of City Council hearings to adopt a plan designed to guide development for the next 30 years.

Teresa Cortes, president of Via Campesina, said the children of low-income families will suffer the most because of the lack of affordable housing. “We don’t think it’s fair for our children to be raised in such horrible conditions,” she said.

City officials say that the General Plan requires that new housing developments in certain areas of the city include at least 20% low-income units. In total, the plan would allow for about 2,000 low-income units to be built by the year 2020, city officials said.

Officials also point out that the plan allows for 140 units of low-income housing to replace a dilapidated mobile home park near Oxnard Boulevard.

Community Development Director Richard Maggio told the protesters that the plan would allow for 100 new farm-worker housing units and 430 low-income units in the next five years.

Housing Authority Director Sal Gonzalez said in an interview that the city already has more than 2,500 low-income housing units, most occupied by farm workers.

However, city officials have acknowledged in the past that providing enough housing for everyone who wants it is a long, uphill battle, primarily because Oxnard has the county’s highest number of low-income households--those earning less than $24,000 a year.

Two farm-worker camps in Oxnard--Three “S” and Garden City labor camps--currently provide housing to about 235 workers.

Marco Antonio Abarca, an attorney for California Rural Legal Assistance, said the lack of low-income housing in the city has reached a “crisis stage.”

“The problem of finding decent shelter is particularly acute for farm workers employed by area growers and nursery owners and for day laborers used by local contractors, landscapers, homeowners and renters,” he said.

Via Campesina has helped develop farm-worker housing in Moorpark and Fillmore.

The General Plan, which is about 19 months overdue, has been the subject of criticism and review for the past four years. For the past year, the Planning Commission has taken public testimony on the plan. Before that, the General Plan Advisory Committee, a 22-member citizens panel, spent more than 2 1/2 years drafting the document.

Slow-growth advocates have raised numerous objections to the proposed plan, which allows for a population increase of nearly 41,000 and a 135% increase in commercial development.

However, the plan has won the support of the Oxnard Area Chamber of Commerce, which sent a letter to the council last week, asking that the document be adopted as soon as possible.

At least two speakers suggested Monday that adoption of the plan be delayed until after the November elections so the document does not become a political issue.

The council must adopt the plan by Dec. 31 in order to avoid difficult legal barriers in approving permits and zone-change applications, city officials said.

During the first day of hearings, Councilwoman Dorothy Maron, who is running for mayor in November, questioned why the plan provides for more commercial growth than residential growth.

“What’s the ultimate aim in this so-called job-housing balance?” she said.

The plan allows for an increase of 13,462 housing units and could add 73,768 jobs.

Maggio said the plan provides more commercial development because the city has about 30,000 more workers than jobs.

The plan allows the number of housing units in the city to increase by 32%--from 41,857 units today to 55,319 in the year 2020. It also would allow a 130% increase in the amount of commercial development, to 16 million square feet from the current 7 million.

Industrial development would increase by more than 215% under the proposal with 28 million square feet added to the current 13 million.

Most of the growth would come from the conversion of 3,684 acres of agricultural land to urban use.

Under the plan, the city would generate more than 1.2 million vehicle trips each day by the year 2020. As of 1986, the city generated 854,500 vehicle trips per day.