Affordable Housing Plan Violators Cite Paperwork Delays : Regulation: Only South Pasadena officials show an inclination to ignore state law. Six other cities say they intend to meet their obligations.

Officials in most of the seven San Gabriel Valley cities that have been admonished for violating state laws on affordable housing attributed their noncompliance to paperwork delays and said they intend to meet their obligations.

The cities were among 47 receiving a stern Oct. 27 letter from the state attorney general’s office stating that they have missed two deadlines for submitting plans for affordable housing, as required by law.

The San Gabriel Valley cities receiving the letter were Bradbury, Claremont, Covina, Monrovia, Sierra Madre, South Pasadena and Walnut.

Only South Pasadena officials showed an inclination to ignore the law, which has no sanctions against cities that fail to comply.

South Pasadena City Manager Kenneth C. Farfsing declined to say how he will respond to the state’s letter. The state’s requirements for affordable housing are unrealistic, he said.

“Part of the problem is with the state goals coming from Sacramento--they don’t realize the constraints the communities have,” he said.

The high cost of land in South Pasadena, for example, makes it difficult for the city to provide affordable housing, Farfsing said. He also said the city is concentrating on efforts to fight off the proposed extension of the Long Beach Freeway (710) through South Pasadena, a project that would mean the elimination of 1,426 homes in the area.

“We have one state agency taking housing away and another state agency hitting us with a stick and saying we need to provide housing,” Farfsing said.

City officials in Claremont, Covina, Monrovia, Sierra Madre and Walnut said that they have affordable housing plans or are working on such plans and that it is just a matter of notifying the state.

Covina city officials said they were too busy working on the city’s General Plan to get their housing papers in on time, and City Hall is short of staff, said Fran Delach, assistant city manager.

“What they don’t say,” Monrovia City Manager Rod Gould complained, “is that last summer we wrote them a letter saying we’re in the process of writing the General Plan, including the housing plan.”

The state wrote back, Gould said, acknowledging the delay.

“We were rather shocked when our mayor and a local reporter received this letter,” he said.

In Claremont, city officials have hired a planner to prepare a housing blueprint and appointed a committee of residents to study the problem, said Sharon Wood, the city’s community development director. The city has a dozen programs for affordable housing but has not completed the state-required forms on its efforts, Wood said.

“We’ve been spending our time and resources on programs to provide housing assistance rather than providing the state with a plan,” she said.

Bradbury City Manager Dolly Vollaire was on vacation, and other Bradbury officials said they could not respond to the letter.

The state has no way of enforcing the affordable housing laws, but Deputy Atty. Gen. Kathleen Mikkelson told city officials in the warning letters that their failure to comply leaves them vulnerable to lawsuits.

The threat of lawsuits may not be enough, said Steve Carlson, a state lobbyist for the Apartment Assn. of Greater Los Angeles and executive director of the California Housing Council.

“One of the things that maybe can result from this is to prove to the Legislature that maybe some more teeth are needed in the state housing law,” Carlson said. “If not force, a way to cajole or nudge to get compliance.”

The state requires local governments to submit a blueprint in their general plan on how they will meet their fair share of the region’s affordable housing needs. In April, the state Department of Housing and Community Development reported that 79% of the state’s 509 cities and counties had not complied with the housing laws.

Cities that received warning letters from the attorney general’s office are the most serious violators; they include cities that never have submitted any type of affordable housing plan.

In August, the City of Industry won a legislative exemption from the state requirements to build 122 low- and moderate-income housing units. The City of Industry, set up in 1957 as an industrial town with no residential zoning, is in a unique situation, said Paul Kranhold, an assistant director in the state’s housing department. It is unlikely that other cities could get a similar exemption, he said.

So far, Kranhold said, the attorney general’s letters seem to be enough of a nudge to make cities take notice.

“We’ve gotten further in five days than we did in five months,” he said.

The state is not going after cities just to slap them on the wrist for their bookkeeping practices, Kranhold said. Cities are legally and morally obligated to provide affordable housing.

“I think there’s sort of a moral imperative,” he said.