IRVINE : Affordable-Housing Goals to Be Changed

After debating the city’s affordable-housing goals, the City Council this week decided to wait until next month to begin modifying or reducing those goals.

Irvine’s housing goals, adopted in 1989 by the previous City Council headed by former Mayor Larry Agran, are too liberal for the council majority elected last year, council members said during a late-night public hearing.

“You’re seeing a more conservative viewpoint than the one . . . in 1989,” said Councilman Bill Vardoulis, who was elected to fill an open council seat last November.

Besides Vardoulis, council members Barry J. Hammond and William A. (Art) Bloomer and Mayor Sally Anne Sheridan were elected last year after criticizing the liberal policies of the Agran-led council.

Affordable housing was one of the major actions pushed through by the former council. Councilwoman Paula Werner, elected in 1988, is the only member of the council who supported the current housing goals.

But Sheridan and the rest of the council agreed that the goals, which specify that 25% of new homes built in the city should be affordable to county residents on the bottom half of the income ladder, need major reworking and not just cosmetic changes.

Facing major changes are the current goals that new housing projects should incorporate affordable housing within each development and that the city should allow developers to build more houses in a project to make it easier to provide affordable units.

The housing policies will be reconsidered at the council’s Feb. 12 meeting.