City Contest to Push Affordable Housing

San Diego city officials want to change the way La Jollans and others think about affordable housing and show that it’s not just the realm of the very poor but also of respectable people short on cash or prospects.

So officials are sponsoring a nationwide architectural contest to create a working design--ostensibly for two city-owned parcels of land in La Jolla and Linda Vista--showing current homeowners that low-income housing won’t ruin their neighborhoods.

The city doesn’t plan to build the complexes just yet--rather it wants to make its point about what can be done. But, if all goes well and the money can be found, officials aren’t ruling out the prospect that more low-income housing projects will be on the drawing boards soon.

When informed of the project, La Jolla residents have expressed concern about the potential of safety hazards for elderly in the area.

City official disagreed.

“These aren’t tenements or run-down places people think of in Chicago, with people hanging out of windows,” said Steven Mikelman of the housing commission. “There’s no welfare mothers and drug addicts like people think.

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“This project focuses on people earning between $20,000 and $40,000 a year, from the working poor up to medium income. There’s a great housing need in this economic area,” he said.

“People have all these fears when it comes to low-income housing projects,” said Norman Subotnik, a spokesman for the city’s housing commission. “They’re afraid that their property values will plummet, and that the affordable housing won’t meet the design standards of their own homes.

“We want to show that the people who live in these situations can be hard-working people with limited income--secretaries, clerks, police people, teachers, people just like the rest of us,” Subotnik said. “The purpose of the contest is to educate people to the possibilities.”

Beginning Monday, city officials will publish advertisements in major newspapers nationwide, as well as numerous architectural design magazines, for its design competition, entitled “Affordable Living: Building a City of Neighbors.”

A grand prize of $10,000 will be awarded, as well as second prizes of $3,000 for each of the two sites in La Jolla and Linda Vista, officials said Friday.

The contest, which runs through Nov. 23, is the brainchild of Brenda Baxter, a scholar-in-residence from Nova Scotia who is working with the housing commission on a one-year project. “I think it’s a terrific idea,” Subotnik said. “It’s going to show what this agency is all about, providing housing for people.”

The project’s twin themes are dispelling misconceptions about affordable housing by integrating such complexes into an established, higher-income neighborhood in La Jolla and matching public housing with nearby public transit in a mixed-use development in Linda Vista, Mikelman said.

The La Jolla segment of the project calls for a design for a 27-unit structure on a city-owned hillside lot near West Muirlands Drive at Fay Avenue. The Linda Vista site is a 5.5-acre parcel owned by the Metropolitan Transit Development Board at the intersection of Linda Vista Road, Morena Boulevard and Friar’s Road--next to a proposed station for San Diego’s light-rail trolley line.

Housing commission officials are encouraging community involvement in the project. The jury of judges includes not only professional architects but also local community planning members. Reactions from local homeowners to the contest entries have also been solicited.

Officials have strong hopes that, given community support, the projects might one day become reality.

“Right now, it’s just a theoretical exercise,” Subotnik said. “Whether these projects will ever be built depends on available money and changing people’s attitudes. In any case, they’ll have some prime designs to choose from.”