Residents Assail Low-Income Housing Plan
A proposal to build a 100-unit, low-income rental housing development in downtown Moorpark has sparked a protest among area homeowners who say the city is creating a local ghetto.
The protest, mainly by homeowners in a middle-class neighborhood next to the proposed development site, came to a head at a Planning Commission hearing Monday night.
“What is it going to bring to Ventura County except another Watts?” said Teresa Schmidt, a Regal Park condominium owner.
“Spread it around,” she said, urging that other low-income housing units already built or planned for the downtown area be relocated to other neighborhoods.
Situated just south of Los Angeles Avenue and east of Moorpark Avenue, the proposed site is a long, narrow lot bordered on the east by a strip of single-family houses facing Fremont Street, and on the west by the 120-unit Regal Park condominium complex.
The proposed project, which would be built and managed by Bibo Inc. of Camarillo and financed with federal and state government help, would be Moorpark’s first rental-housing project composed completely of low-income rental units.
About a mile east of the site is Villa Campesina, a low-income housing tract that was built by its homeowners. Nearby is another site where Westland Co. is proposing a development, with some units intended for low-income homeowners.
Also, Moorpark’s largest apartment complex, Le Club, borders the Regal Park condominiums on the west. Le Club’s 370 apartments include 37 units reserved for low-income residents.
With Le Club on one side and the proposed project on another, Regal Park resident Debbie Menard said she thinks that the value of her condominium will decrease. She said condominiums in the area now sell from $125,000 to $150,000.
“I’m going to become an apartment, that’s my view,” said Menard, now trying to sell her condominium. “I’ve had people tell me I wouldn’t buy your property knowing this was going on.”
Many of the other 75 or so homeowners from Regal Park and Fremont Street at the public hearing echoed Menard’s concerns over their property values.
“It seems there is enough rental property in the area,” Fremont Street homeowner Max Yeats said at the hearing. “Don’t make a ghetto out of that one area. I don’t want to live next to something where I’m going to get robbed.”
“What makes you think you’re going to get robbed?” Planning Commissioner Steve Brodsky asked.
After hesitating, Yeats said, “There’s going to be rentals and there’s going to be changes. There’s going to be all kinds of illegal aliens and stuff.”
Other residents voiced similar concerns that the city is setting a dangerous trend by concentrating apartments and low-income housing downtown.
“It’s difficult when speaking on an issue like this not to reiterate the chorus ‘not in my back yard,’ ” Regal Park condominium owner Wes Aardahl said. “But I think a person doesn’t have to resort to a prejudice against low-income housing to object to this project. I have a big concern that Moorpark is becoming severely stratified by class.”
Planning Commission Chairman Michael H. Wesner Jr., who came out against the project, said he agreed that the development might concentrate too much low-income housing downtown.
But Wesner said he thought that the project would probably be filled by local residents if it is built.
Many of the people at the hearing would qualify to live in the development, Wesner said. Eligibility for the apartments would be based on the county’s median income, with the maximum income per household ranging from $16,940 for some units to $29,040 for others. The apartments themselves would rent from $423 to $726 a month.
An official of Bibo Inc. said that the concerns of residents are unfounded and that the project would not bring an increase in crime to the area as some claimed.
“With the waiting list we expect to have, why should we keep a problem tenant?” he asked.
The hearing ended with the commission voting 3 to 1 to continue its deliberations until Aug. 5.
