Official Urges Port Hueneme to Drop Low-Cost Housing Plan : Government: The council will be told it cannot afford to put $300,000 to $500,000 toward the HUD deal.

Port Hueneme officials are recommending that the city drop its efforts to build a 20-unit low-cost apartment complex, leaving nearly 900 needy people with fewer options.

City Housing Director Tina Plummer said she will recommend at a City Council meeting tonight that the project be terminated because the city cannot afford to kick in the $300,000 to $500,000 needed to complete it.

Irma Gardea, one of 882 applicants on a waiting list for low-income housing, said she is disappointed with the staff’s recommendation and hopes that the City Council, which also acts as the housing authority, will reject it.

“This means that I will be on the list even longer,” said Gardea, 36, a single mother of two who hoped to move into a three-bedroom apartment in the proposed apartment complex. “It’s just upsetting to hear things like that.”

The city’s Housing Authority oversees 90 units of public housing and provides rent subsidies to 344 residents who live in privately owned housing.

The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development agreed to pay the $1.5-million cost of building the three- and four-bedroom apartment complex, Plummer said. But HUD will not reimburse the city for the cost of the one-acre site at the corner of Ponoma and Clara streets, she said.

HUD officials told the city that it will not help pay for landscaping or architectural upgrades to make the structure blend in with the surrounding middle-class neighborhood, Plummer said. Although HUD usually expects a city to share in the costs of providing public housing, Port Hueneme is not in a position to contribute because of expected deep reductions in its budget, she said.

“When we applied for HUD funds on the project in 1989, we didn’t find ourself in the fiscal crisis that we are facing now,” Plummer said. “I can’t ask a city that is facing budget cuts from Sacramento to make donations of up to $500,000 for this project.”

Other Ventura County cities with public housing projects are facing similar problems.

Ventura has not built any new low-cost housing in the past three years because it is getting more difficult to buy land for a site and secure federal dollars to pay for the development, Housing Director Jim Koslow said. The continuing recession makes the probability of new construction even less likely, he said.

“The roadblocks in today’s market are even more formidable,” Koslow said.

That is little consolation for Gardea and others who were hoping to take advantage of the low-cost apartment complex in Port Hueneme. Gardea, an office clerk, lives with her two teen-age daughters in a two-bedroom subsidized duplex in Port Hueneme.

She wants to move into a three-bedroom apartment so her daughters can have privacy, but can’t afford the rent charged by private landlords on her income of $1,028 a month.

A three-bedroom apartment in the proposed apartment complex would cost Gardea about $260 a month, Plummer said.

Even if the City Council approved the project, Gardea would have to beat out more than 800 contenders for a unit, Plummer said.

Eligibility is based on family income.

For example, a family of four with an annual income of less than $24,200 would qualify, she said.

Gardea, who has been a single mother for 14 years, said she will keep her name on the list, even if the city drops the housing project.

“I’ve been able to make ends meet this long,” she said. “But if it wasn’t for public housing, I don’t know where we’d be.”