Cities’ Affordable Housing Money Accumulates : Funds: More than $50 million in redevelopment accounts is going unused in the county while the need for low-income units grows, state records show.

With 300,000 Orange County residents in need of affordable housing, more than $50 million has accumulated in city redevelopment agency accounts established to provide shelter for low-income residents, state records show.

A state housing director said Monday that the situation in Orange County is emblematic of problems in other areas throughout the state, where housing accounts have been allowed to go unused while the need for affordable units continues to grow.

“If you look at the issue of affordable housing in a political context, it’s easy to understand what happens,” said Paul Kranhold, deputy director of the California Department of Housing and Community Development. “Affordable housing in exclusive areas has not been a popular commodity.”

In a recently published review of redevelopment agency accounts statewide for 1990-91, including 19 local cities and the county of Orange, the state Housing Department found that agencies spent $18.5 million to develop housing projects while $52.4 million remained unused. Redevelopment agencies must reserve 20% of locally generated tax money collected to fund affordable housing projects.

According to the state report, $14 million was available to the city of Brea’s redevelopment agency in 1991, the most of any local agency reviewed in the report. After Brea, the Orange Redevelopment Agency was listed with slightly more than $11 million during the same period.

Officials in each city, however, said the state statistics are out of date and do not record money from the same account spent since 1991 to increase the stock of low-income units.

“We’ve been very busy,” said Ellen Bonneville, operations manager for Orange’s Department of Economic Development. “The numbers don’t show what we have done.”

Bonneville said that last year, the agency spent about $2 million for rent and other subsidy programs and the development of about 76 units for seniors or low-income families.

A listing of ongoing or recently approved projects was not available for Brea, but Terry Williams, a redevelopment agency assistant, said Monday that a number of plans “are in all stages of development. That is one of the bigger problems with the (state) numbers.”

Kranhold said the figures reflect the most recent accounting of money spent by redevelopment agencies. A review of agency accounts for 1991-92 is to be published this summer.

“In Orange County, there were large amounts of funds that were available,” Kranhold said. “There is a tremendous amount of money growing in those (Orange County) accounts, but it’s growing all over.”

Statewide, the housing department found that a surplus of $350.7 million went unused by redevelopment agencies in the same year studied.

As agency accounts remain flush with cash, housing advocates say the need for low-income units has never been greater.

Susan Oakson, executive director of the Orange County Homeless Issues Task Force, estimated that 300,000 people in the county are in need of affordable housing.

“In terms of redevelopment money, we see these (housing) set-aside funds as crucial,” Oakson said.

Allen Baldwin, executive director of the Orange County Community Housing Corp., said the money will only be spent when leaders overcome the broad political negatives affixed to the issue of low-income housing.

“These days, the problems of keeping a city in the black are so great that affordable housing is last on the council agenda,” said Baldwin, whose organization builds and manages low-income housing projects. “You almost have to commit political suicide to approve this kind of housing.

“Somehow, officials on city councils and planning commissions have to pull themselves up and say this is wrong,” he said. “It’s a good time to do something about it. Property values are as low as they have ever been.”