HUD Rejects $4.4 Million for Santa Clarita Senior Housing : Assistance: The federal agency said the denial came because the area is 93% white. Rep. Carlos Moorhead has asked for a review.

Despite the presence of about 1,400 impoverished senior citizens in the Santa Clarita Valley, a federal housing agency has rejected a request to fund a housing project there because the community is predominantly white.

The Los Angeles office of the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development last month rejected the proposed $4.4-million, 64-unit project on Avenida Rotella on the grounds that it would be built in a “racially isolated” neighborhood that is 93% white, an agency spokesman said.

Federal civil rights legislation requires HUD to promote integrated housing and prevent housing discrimination, said Tom Honore, director of the fair housing division for HUD’s Los Angeles office.

“We’re not excluding whites,” Honore said. “We’re saying scarce resources should be used in neighborhoods that are not insulated as to race.”

But HUD officials in Washington have decided to review the local ruling at the request of Rep. Carlos Moorhead (R-Glendale), who represents part of the valley, agency spokesman Bill Glavin said Friday.

“If you’re poor, you need housing no matter what color you are,” Moorhead said Friday. “The HUD decision may be legal, but that doesn’t make it fair.”

Santa Clarita officials have also protested the ruling, saying there is a strong need for such affordable housing for senior citizens in the area.

In addition, they pointed out that about 14% of the city’s 114,000 residents are Latino, many of whom live in east Newhall near the proposed project.

The project would house about 80 people drawn from among the 504 valley residents age 62 or older who earn less than $7,500 annually, said Marc Herrera, a spokesman for Southern California Presbyterian Homes, the private, nonprofit group that sought HUD funding for the project.

Some units would also be available to the 936 local senior citizens who earn between $7,500 and $15,000 annually, he said.

The Santa Clarita project must compete with hundreds of other proposals for senior housing from around the country, Glavin said. HUD only has enough money--about $529 million--to fund about 9,400 such units nationwide, he said.

“I think what HUD is doing is exactly right,” said Florence Roisman, an attorney with the Washington-based National Housing Law Project and a law professor at George Washington University. “Most of the money spent in the past went to poor whites. You’ve got to even things up.”

HUD officials said privately that the Santa Clarita project is not likely to be funded despite Moorhead’s objections because of the unmet need for such housing in other parts of Los Angeles County, where the percentage of minorities is much higher.

If HUD rejects the project, the Presbyterian group will no longer seek federal funding for projects in largely white communities, Herrera said. The agency has received HUD funding in such areas as Long Beach, Glendale and Bell Gardens.

“We’ve always gone with a project based on the need,” he said. “But now we’ll obviously have to look at racial and ethnic makeup.”