State Low-Cost Housing Goal Hard to Fit in High-Price City : Development: Palos Verdes Estates is one of 47 cities to receive a strong warning from the attorney general to submit a plan for affordable housing in compliance with a 1981 law.
Affordable housing is scarce in the cities of the Palos Verdes Peninsula, but Palos Verdes Estates seems to be in a class by itself.
The city not only has no affordable housing, but officials there for more than a decade have ignored a state law requiring that they at least draw up plans for such housing.
Palos Verdes Estates and 46 other cities were warned recently by the state attorney general that they are delinquent in submitting affordable housing plans. State officials consider Palos Verdes Estates one of the worst offenders because it has never filed a plan. Cities that do not comply with the 1981 law could be sued by the state and independent housing groups, and might not qualify for some types of government funds.
Palos Verdes Estates officials cite several factors that would make it difficult to set aside land for affordable housing: high prices, a lengthy review process, the limited availability of land and a lack of funds.
City Manager James Hendrickson said Palos Verdes Estates decided not to submit plans because it is too built out to support the kind of development needed for affordable housing. Of the city’s 5,000 lots, only about 150 are left to build on, he said, and those parcels are designated for single-unit development.
“We have minimal condo zoning in the city, so we face some very tough constraints in dealing with the issue,” he said. “The other fact is that 60% of California cities have failed to comply with the law, so it’s not a phenomenon that is limited to the city of Palos Verdes Estates.”
The entire peninsula has only 10 affordable housing units, but other cities say they are making efforts to set aside affordable housing intended for senior citizens, a growing percentage of the peninsula’s residents.
* Rancho Palos Verdes has approved plans for a 250-unit Marriott Lifecare Center for senior citizens. The city also donates its block grants to nearby cities such as Lomita for the development of senior citizen housing.
* Rolling Hills Estates modified its ordinances to allow mixed commercial and residential redevelopment, hoping to encourage the type of housing where senior citizens are located close to shops and services. Richard Thompson, the city’s planning director, said some developers have shown interest in building those types of projects when the economy improves.
The peninsula cities have seen the percentage of elderly residents at least double within the past decade, according to census figures. In Rancho Palos Verdes, the proportion of elderly residents nearly tripled.
The affordable housing law was developed in 1981 to spread responsibility for these units to all of the cities and towns in each region in an effort to avoid a clustering of poor residents in inner city areas. The concentration of poor residents creates a social services burden on some cities, such as Los Angeles, where thousands of applicants crowd the waiting list for available public housing units.
“The basic concept is to provide a fair distribution across cities and counties so that people at every income level have some choices and housing opportunities,” said Joseph Carreras, housing program manager for the Southern California Assn. of Governments. SCAG analyzes census and other data to set the number of affordable housing units each city in the region should have.
Some wealthy communities have made no effort to develop affordable housing, even when assigned only a few units, said Rod Field, housing law coordinator for the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles.
“It’s not fair if only rich people are allowed access to the best places, and I think that’s what’s happening in a lot of these communities,” Field said.
Several other cities in the Los Angeles area, including Beverly Hills, also have received the attorney general’s warning.
According to SCAG, 231 units of affordable housing should be built on the peninsula over the next five years.
The housing falls into three categories, based on family income. To qualify for the lowest-income level, a family of four would earn up to $23,450 a year. The next income bracket has a cap of $37,500 a year, and the top income category carries a maximum of $56,300 a year.
The SCAG housing analysis showed that Rolling Hills, the peninsula’s smallest city, should have two units for the lowest income level, four units for the middle category, and three units for the top bracket. The units would be built in a city where most homes sell for a half-million dollars or more.
In Rancho Palos Verdes, the largest peninsula city, SCAG analysts determined that 38 units should be built for the lowest income level, 46 for the middle level, and 52 for the top level. Fully 63.8% of the homes in the city sell for a half-million dollars or more.
But city planners say a lack of space limits their options for affordable housing. They also cite high land prices and scarce state and federal funds.
“Cities just don’t have the money to construct that type of housing,” said Thompson of Rolling Hills Estates. “We have to be as creative as we possibly can to find ways of devising our ordinances to make it as easy as possible for private developers.”
Field, the Legal Aid Foundation official, believes cities should be able to provide more units than they have, however.
“Certainly, I would agree there’s not enough money,” he said. “But on the other hand, when you look at these wealthy communities, it’s hard to believe that Beverly Hills can’t come up with enough money to build 39 units, or Palos Verdes (Estates) can’t come up with enough to build 78. So I don’t buy it totally, but I’m sure it’s valid for some communities.”
Cities often face a lengthy state review process for their housing plans, and some disagree with SCAG’s analysis of how much affordable housing should be within their boundaries. Moreover, some cities adopt plans they know are out of compliance with the law. SCAG’s Carreras said 79 cities in the state are suspected of having done this.
“Everybody acknowledges the rate of compliance is low, especially since our housing need seems to get worse,” Carreras said. “More needs to be done to get local governments working together, instead of (having) situations where they are at odds over a housing element.”
Carreras said local and state housing officials are looking at ways to streamline the process so that more cities can be in compliance, but currently the compliance rate stands at about 60%. Field said he favors adopting a carrot and stick approach so that cities have an incentive to develop affordable housing plans.
There is little the state can do to enforce the law, although the attorney general’s office says it might sue cities that do not respond to its warning.
“The law doesn’t require cities to make sure the housing gets built,” said Paul Kranhold, assistant director of the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development. “The process is to facilitate the building of housing, make cities go through the process of saying, ‘This is how we can do it and how we’re going to do it.’ You should be able to go to the housing element and say, ‘Here’s this land here and it’s designated for affordable housing, so that’s where I’m going to go.’ In the absence of that it’s another barrier to construction.”
Low-Cost Housing Deficit
Palos Verdes Peninsula cities should provide 231 affordable housing units to help ease housing pressures in Southern California, according to a regional needs assessment by the Southern California Association of Governments. Currently, there are only 10 such units on the peninsula, all of them in Rancho Palos Verdes.
RANCHO PALOS VERDES Total units needed: 136 Very low income: 38 Low income: 46 Moderate income: 52 Total number of housing units in city: 15,565 ROLLING HILLS Total units needed: 9 Very low income: 2 Low income: 4 Moderate: 3 Total number of housing units in the city: 676 ROLLING HILLS ESTATES Total units needed: 8 Very low income: 2 Low income: 3 Moderate income: 3 Total number of housing units in the city: 2,924 PALOS VERDES ESTATES Total units needed: 78 Very low income: 20 Low income: 27 Moderate income: 31 Total number of housing units in the city: 5,144 In Los Angeles County, housing is considered very low income if it is affordable for a family of four earning no more than $23,450 a year. For low-income and moderate housing, the maximum family income levels are $37,599 and $56,300, respectively. Sources: Southern California Assn. of Governments and state Department of Finance
