IRVINE : Voters May Express Opinion on Housing
The amount of affordable housing that the city requires developers to build has been a hot topic among City Council members for several months, but now voters may get a shot at the issue as well.
Councilman Bill Vardoulis on Tuesday will renew his bid to place affordable-housing questions on a citywide advisory ballot.
Vardoulis proposed such action last month, and the City Council is scheduled to consider potential ballot questions at its 6:30 p.m. session.
At issue, Vardoulis has said, is whether Irvine residents really support the previous City Council’s policy of seeking so-called affordable units in numbers equal to 25% of each developer’s proposed housing project.
That 1989 update to the city’s housing guidelines says 12.5% of all new units built in the city should be affordable to residents earning less than half of the county’s median income. For a family of four, that would be about a total household income of $26,100 a year or less. The guidelines say another 12.5% should be affordable to families earning up to 80% of the median, or about $41,760 for that four-member family.
Those goals mean that builders probably would have to provide rent-subsidized apartments to meet the 25% quota.
Developers, Vardoulis has said, also would want to take advantage of a state law that requires cities to help builders meet the affordable-housing requirement by allowing more units per acre than city law typically allows.
Vardoulis argues that residents would instantly reject such housing requirements if they knew that one-fourth of each new residential village would consist of subsidized apartment units and that the projects would contain up to 25% more houses than usually allowed in Irvine.
On the council’s Tuesday agenda are several proposed ballot advisory questions that would ask voters about different aspects of the city’s housing goals--possibly in November, when a referendum on the fate of the Irvine Co.’s Westpark II project is scheduled.
The council will consider such ballot questions as how much affordable housing should the city require and who should pay to subsidize the affordable housing and whether the city should abandon the goal of providing rental units for low- and very-low-income families and focus on providing condominiums and houses to families earning about $10,000 below the county income median of about $52,200 a year for a family of four.
The council isn’t expected to put the questions on the ballot Tuesday but could vote to start the legal work needed to hold an advisory election.
Vardoulis has said he wants the city to place more of an emphasis on affordable housing that can be purchased instead of rented. He believes the majority of Irvine residents would agree.
Councilwoman Paula Werner, one of the council’s most ardent supporters of housing for lower-income residents, said she believes the suggested ballot questions are phrased to encourage scrapping the city’s current affordable-housing goals.
“It’s just inflammatory and doesn’t explain what is being asked,” Werner said this week. “If we’re going to change the housing (goals), then we’d better consider the impacts on other land uses and reassess the whole (city) General Plan.”
For instance, she said, the questions should let voters know that if the city doesn’t provide housing affordable to office and blue-collar workers, the city will end up generating more pollution and traffic on the freeways and city streets as workers commute from more distant and more affordable areas.
