HUNTINGTON BEACH : Affordable Housing Plan to Be Developed
The City Council, which has been criticized for not clearly defining its affordable housing policy, tentatively agreed this week to adopt an interim policy and set up a committee to devise a long-range plan.
At a joint study session Monday, members of the council and Planning Commission voted to support interim regulations requiring developers to build residential projects with more units priced for buyers or renters with “moderate” incomes.
In the meantime, a seven-member committee is expected to be established to write a definitive citywide policy. It would be made up of two council members, two Planning Commission members, and three city residents to be recommended by the Chamber of Commerce and Huntington Beach-Fountain Valley Board of Realtors.
Formation of the committee and the interim plan both still require formal approval by the council at its meeting next week. Council members Linda Moulton-Patterson and Grace Winchell are the only council members who opposed the tentative actions.
By 1994 the city must submit to the state a policy on providing housing for low- and moderate-income residents.
Under the proposed interim policy, 20% of the units in new residential communities would have to be designated for moderate-income residents.
In Orange County, households earning an annual salary between $41,760 and $62,650 would fall into the moderate-income level.
The new guidelines, if adopted, would be less stringent than the city’s existing affordable-housing restrictions. The current policy calls for developers to price some housing units for very-low income residents, earning less than $26,100 a year, and low-income residents, with salaries between $26,100 and $38,000.
But the policy has been loosely enforced, and council members are divided over whether they support it. Some planning commissioners and residents recently have lashed out at the council for not specifically defining its affordable housing position, leading to Monday’s joint study session on the matter.
Before enacting a new policy, however, council members will hold a series of public hearings on the proposed restrictions. Many developers have said they are concerned about how the new policy will cut into their profits.
Commissioner Susan Newman told the group that she believes that developers are “a more forceful element in this than any of us. If we come up with a policy that they decide they won’t follow, then it won’t work.”
Until a final policy is adopted, council members agreed that an interim plan is needed as a guide for several large development projects they will be considering in the coming months. Among the projects scheduled to come up before the council by the end of the year are the 4,400-unit Holly-Seacliff development, a 1,300-unit community on the McDonnell Douglas site, and two other projects totaling 900 units, Planning Director Howard Zelefsky said.
