Council Balks at Low-Income Housing Levels

Glendale City Council members’ discomfort over low-income apartments may cause them to change or eliminate a building cap ordinance, one of the key proposals aimed at slowing the city’s construction boom.

As they continued their final review of a sweeping growth control program, council members Tuesday were forced to consider thorny questions concerning how many new apartments they should reserve for low-income tenants.

City staff members, saying the city’s growth control plan could otherwise be subject to legal attack, urged the council to set aside up to 740 building permits annually for so-called affordable housing units. But some council members are worried that such a proposal could attract an unwanted project.

“I don’t think I’m ready to see a housing tenement in the city of Glendale,” Mayor Larry Zarian said. “I don’t want a New York-type, Chicago-type, New Jersey-type project here. I want to make sure the law is written in such a manner that it discourages that, rather than encourages it.”

Zarian raised that concern during discussion of the city’s proposed building cap ordinance. The measure would limit the number of residential building permits issued annually to slow the pace of the city’s growth.

The council has been discussing the building cap and citywide zoning revisions as tools to curb an apartment and condominium construction boom that has led to traffic congestion, parking problems, and crowding at Glendale’s schools and parks. Zarian said he believes that the council will take a final vote on growth control measures in a few weeks.

But Tuesday’s meeting ended with no consensus on the building cap. Council members asked the city staff to research several issues before the discussion resumes next Tuesday.

As proposed by the city staff, Glendale would issue building permits for no more than 1,400 single-family houses, condominiums or apartment units annually through 1994. Among these, 740 units would go only to projects in which at least 50% of the units are earmarked for low-income households. The remaining 660 units could be sold or rented at prevailing market rates. Developers would have to compete for these market-rate permits by submitting their designs to a city review and ranking process.

The large number of affordable units proposed by the city staff has already aroused debate. The Glendale Planning Commission in July urged that the ratio be changed to 600 affordable units and 800 market-rate homes.

At Tuesday’s meeting, Zarian said he was concerned that reserving hundreds of permits for affordable housing might attract a large, undesirable tenement or prompt state lawmakers to force such a project on Glendale if they perceive this as an unfulfilled goal.

Councilman Carl Raggio said he also opposes tenement-style projects.

“If there’s a need for low-income housing, what you want here is something that’s almost indistinguishable from other housing, so that it meets the quality standards,” he said. “I don’t want a brick thing 25 stories high that has chicken wire and everything else on it so you can stop people from jumping off.”

But Councilman Jerold Milner said the growth control tool won’t necessarily cause the construction of low-income apartments.

“The building cap ordinance, as proposed, only says that whatever you do, you won’t allow more than a certain number of units to be built in a given time,” Milner said. “It doesn’t say you have to build them. It doesn’t say you have to provide anything that would encourage building them.”

Still, Planning Director John McKenna cautioned that if the city does not provide an opportunity for developers to propose affordable housing projects, “then the state is liable to view your building cap program as another roadblock to somebody trying to build low and moderate housing.”

City Atty. Scott H. Howard said he believes that Glendale could successfully defend its building cap program in court if it retains the allocation of permits for affordable housing.

The proposed ordinance requires that an affordable housing project serve low-income tenants for 15 years. But Milner asked the staff to research whether a longer commitment, such as 30 years, could be imposed. He said this would ensure that low-income tenants would not be evicted if the landlord decides to upgrade the property after 15 years.

Councilman Richard Jutras protested that lengthening the affordable housing commitment would result in even fewer low-income apartments. Some developers might be more inclined to build affordable apartments if they could convert them to market-rate housing after the shorter commitment, he said.

“What you’re doing is eliminating the ones for 15 years that could have been built,” Jutras said.

Raggio said after the meeting that he was uncertain the measure is even needed. He said it is designed to slow construction surges that are unlikely to occur under the city’s new, more rigorous review process.

“I’m open,” Raggio said. “But I’m not convinced it is the answer to everything.”