Rentals for Poor Shatter Ojai Calm : Housing: Planners OK apartments north of the town center. Some neighbors object to living near low-income people.

A battle over low-income housing has broken the calm in Ojai this week, sparking a skirmish between residents who don’t want poor people in their neighborhood and officials who say the city has an obligation to build the housing.

At the center of the fight is a publicly subsidized apartment project that would provide homes for 21 families with incomes less than 60% of the county average.

But residents say the Montgomery Street apartments, four blocks north of the town center, would bring crime and shabby living conditions to a community known for its small-town charm.

“I’m afraid of the type of people that will be attracted by a complex of this sort,” said Jacqueline Burge, a resident who has collected about 425 signatures of people opposed to the project.

Another resident, Kent Campbell, said the city will have to hire additional law enforcement to police the new apartments. He complained that every “welfare person in the county” will take up residence near his home.

“I definitely wouldn’t encourage my children to live there,” Campbell said.

Despite such objections, and the attendance of 50 residents opposing the project, the city Planning Commission unanimously approved the project Wednesday evening. The apartments, to be built by the nonprofit Cabrillo Economic Development Corp., would rent for as little as $330 a month, the developer said.

City officials said they were surprised to hear such negative testimony, which Commissioner Joe McAllister called “bigotry at its worst.”

“Just because you’re poor, it doesn’t mean you’re trash,” McAllister said Friday. “These people . . . are what I’d call rednecks.”

The project has created a stir in Ojai, McAllister said, because residents feel it will reduce property values.

“But that doesn’t reduce the need for low-income housing,” McAllister said. “And we have a set of goals that calls for a certain amount to be built over time.”

The city’s General Plan calls for an increase in the number of low-income units. But since 1983, only about 50% of the goal of 94 affordable dwellings have been built, Planning Director Bill Prince said.

Meanwhile, Ojai has exceeded its goal for higher-cost housing by about 180%, Prince said.

Countywide, only about 2,000 low-income residences have been built in the last decade, said Kate McLean, president of the Ventura County Community Foundation.

The nonprofit foundation, an advocate for affordable housing, reported in March that only 12% of area households could qualify to buy a house at the county’s median price of $241,000. At that price, the report said, a family would need an annual income of almost $80,000 to meet mortgage payments.

The cost of renting a house or apartment locally is equally high. The report said a two-bedroom house rented for $910 in 1989 and a two-bedroom apartment rented for $729.

The Ojai project is an attempt to reverse that trend. A four-person family with $28,000 in annual income could rent apartments there for between $330 and $550 a month, the developer said.

But residents in neighboring areas say the current drought, combined with growing traffic congestion, makes the project’s location less than ideal.

Mike Morris, who lives across the street from the project site, said that even though Cabrillo has a 1986 hookup guarantee from the water company, city officials should reject the project because the drought has made new hookups undesirable.

Morris said the apartments would bring in about 100 new residents and put a strain on the local water supply.

However, Morris said he would not object to the project if it were built on one of the five other sites studied by the developer. He said traffic problems would not be as bad in other neighborhoods.

Lynn Jacobs, a spokeswoman for a Ventura company that builds low-income housing, said overall water resources would not be affected by 21 more apartments because the renters probably would come from within the Ojai area.

“You use the same water with low-income housing, just in a different place,” said Jacobs, president of Affordable Communities of Ventura.

The project will be considered by the City Council later this month. Councilwoman Nina Shelley said it is expected to pass.