Yaroslavsky Charges CRA Neglect of Housing Needs : Redevelopment: He says the agency should build more affordable homes instead of subsidizing developers of commercial projects.

Instead of encouraging desperately needed affordable housing over the past decade, Los Angeles has channeled taxpayer money to commercial developers who should not rely on public subsidies, City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky charged Friday.

In an address at USC before a conference of advocates for the homeless, Yaroslavsky blasted the Community Redevelopment Agency for proposing a $48-million subsidy of a Hollywood commercial complex “at the expense of affordable housing projects.”

Yaroslavsky, acting chairman of the council committee that oversees the CRA, said new census data shows that there are 500,000 more people in Los Angeles than 10 years ago, but that only 100,000 new housing units were built during that time. Much of the blame, he said, lies with the CRA, the city agency charged with fostering commercial and residential development in blighted areas.

The problem is particularly acute in low-income areas such as Hollywood, Southeast Los Angeles and the Westlake district just west of downtown, where hundreds of new residents compete for every unit of new housing, Yaroslavsky told the conference sponsored by Shelter Partnership. “Most are doubling and tripling up in housing units,” he said, “and many are on the streets.”

CRA Commissioner Carlyle Hall defended the agency, saying it has veered sharply from its admittedly pro-development stance in the early 1980s to one in which it now devotes half of its available funds to housing.

Even as the city’s housing crisis worsens, however, the CRA continues to stick to “its bizarre set of priorities” and favor commercial development over affordable housing, Yaroslavsky said.

The latest example, the councilman said, is the CRA’s support of a deal to give developer Melvin Simon & Associates as much as $48 million to build the mammoth Hollywood Promenade project around Mann’s Chinese theater--a $300-million undertaking that the CRA originally said would not cost taxpayers a penny.

That $48 million in public funds could create at least 1,000 low-income housing units for the 32,851 new Hollywood residents since 1980 who must be accommodated with only 7,456 new housing units, Yaroslavsky said.

“This project represents everything Los Angeles is doing wrong with its tax dollars,” Yaroslavsky said. “Is it more important to have shopping or to have housing for our people? . . . We have some of the worst social problems of this city within a stone’s throw of that corner.”

Yaroslavsky, a longtime critic of the redevelopment agency, said later he will vigorously oppose the subsidy when it comes before the full council for approval.

A Melvin Simon spokesman did not return calls for comment.

Councilman Michael Woo, who represents the Hollywood redevelopment area, said the public subsidy is the only way to keep the project on track during a recession. Woo said he plans to lobby his fellow council members because the Promenade project is needed to jump-start the CRA’s stalled $922-million effort to revitalize Hollywood.

Hall, a CRA commissioner and housing advocate who personally opposes the subsidy, said, “It’s one thing for (Yaroslavsky) not to support the Simon project--there’s lots of room for disagreement there. But it’s a non sequitur to leap from that concern to blaming the CRA for the affordable housing problems in Los Angeles. That’s a national problem, and the agency has taken a lead in trying to deal with it.”

Hall said CRA staff is negotiating with Simon to reduce the public subsidies.

The CRA has built or rehabilitated about 20,000 units of housing since 1980, spokesman Joe Fox said. It has built 357 units of affordable housing in Hollywood, is building an additional 319 units and plans to spend as much as $180 million over the next 30 years on low-income housing, Fox said.

Yaroslavsky said CRA claims of repentance have a hollow ring.

“When push comes to shove it’s the same old CRA,” he said. “It’s the same old policy of underwriting commercial projects at the expense of housing. And we just don’t need that.”