3rd Suit Filed to Force City of 631 to Build More Housing : Redevelopment: Group contends that the city collected $195 million in redevelopment taxes since 1986 but has not spent any of it on residences.
A group of property and business owners, which has been battling in court for years to open the city to more housing development, has filed a third lawsuit in an attempt to force the city to set aside $38 million in redevelopment tax money for affordable housing.
The lawsuit, filed Feb. 11 in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleges that the city and its redevelopment arm, the Industry Urban-Development Agency, have steadfastly refused to comply with state laws mandating that 20% of tax funds collected for redevelopment projects be set aside for low- and moderate-income housing.
The Industry Civic Planning Assn., a nonprofit watchdog group, is trying to make the city comply with state law that took effect in 1985 but is rarely enforced if cities do not comply voluntarily.
The ICPA has a related case against the city pending in Superior Court, seeking to rewrite the city’s General Plan to allow for more housing. Last Tuesday, Judge Steven O’Neil continued a hearing on the lawsuit to April 2.
John Gregory, executive director of ICPA, said the new lawsuit was filed last week to meet a statute-of-limitations deadline, but it was not publicized until the group’s board of directors voted Thursday to approve the filing.
A secretary for Industry City Atty. Graham Ritchie said Ritchie no longer answers questions regarding the city and referred inquiries to Chris Rope, Industry’s city manager. Rope did not return telephone calls.
The ICPA contends that state documents show that the city has collected $195 million in redevelopment taxes since 1986.
The group wants 20% of that, or $38 million, to be spent on the development of new housing in the city, which currently has only about 80 houses, Gregory said.
“There’s no low-income housing in the area,” Gregory said. “There’s nothing for the 75,000 workers in Industry.”
The ICPA is demanding that the city allow more than 5,000 housing units be built on undeveloped stretches of land in the eastern part of the city. Of those units, 1,410 would be for low- and moderate-income households, Gregory said.
Under a use-it-or-lose-it clause in the state law, the redevelopment agency would forfeit most of the 20% housing set-aside money if it failed to spend it on low- and moderate-income housing, said Joseph Carreras, housing program manager for the Southern California Assn. of Governments.
Carreras said the city reported $2.86 million in housing set-aside funds for the fiscal year 1989-90, but it was unclear what was being done with the money. Also, 1989-90 was the only time in the last five years that the city reported its set-aside money to the state controller’s office, which it is required by law to do, Carreras said.
“I’m just not sure what their situation is,” Carreras said, adding that the city’s failure to report more about the set-aside funds “casts some doubts as to what these monies are being put to use for.”
Carreras said the state does not check redevelopment agencies to ensure their compliance with redevelopment laws. “There is no review of local agency activity,” he said.
The fear of lawsuits is the only incentive for redevelopment agencies to comply with the law, Carreras said.
The ICPA filed its first lawsuit against the city in 1988, challenging the city’s attempt to start a commercial and industrial redevelopment project on 600 acres of city-owned pastureland in the eastern portion of the city.
After losing in Superior Court, the group won a ruling in the state Court of Appeal stopping the city from declaring the vacant land blighted, a finding necessary to begin a redevelopment project.
Last September, the ICPA filed a second lawsuit seeking to force the city to rewrite its General Plan to allow new housing development on large stretches of city-owned pastureland near Diamond Bar.
A victory in either of the two current ICPA lawsuits could disrupt the city’s tightly knit political community by adding thousands of new voters.
Gregory said that increasing the electorate in the city is one of the ICPA’s major goals. The city now has a population of 631, according to census figures.
Critics of the city have complained that defeating an incumbent politician is nearly impossible because many of the registered voters are city employees or their family members. Two incumbents, including John Ferrero, the city’s only mayor since it was incorporated in 1957, are running unopposed in April’s municipal election.
