Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : Lancaster Council OKs $4.2 Million for Housing Programs

Providing affordable housing and cleaning up blight remain top priorities in Lancaster, where in a 15-minute span Monday the city agreed to spend $4.2 million toward those ends.

In unanimous votes, the City Council, acting as the redevelopment agency, approved spending more than $3.7 million to buy a 121-unit mobile-home park, $334,000 to purchase a pair of four-unit apartment buildings, and $200,000 to help lower-income families buy townhomes in an eastside development.

The purchase of Lido Estates Mobilehome Park, located at Avenue I and 26th Street East, comes just one month after the agency’s first-ever decision to buy a mobile-home park.

In May, Lancaster agreed to buy the 120-space Desert Sands Estates Mobile Home Park for about $3.9 million, a decision that prompted some residents to express concern about the future of their well-kept park.

Lancaster officials said they are interested in buying mobile-home parks to ensure that opportunities for affordable housing continue to exist. The city said it will limit annual space rent hikes at its parks to just 60% of the increase in the Consumer Price Index, a gauge commonly used to measure inflation. Mobile homes account for about 10% of the city’s housing stock.

The city intends to have the managers at both parks continue in their roles for the next year while it determines how it will oversee the facilities.

Councilman George Runner said the city hopes that its ownership of the mobile home parks will be temporary. He said the city may transfer ownership of its parks to a nonprofit group, which would run the parks according to city guidelines. It is also possible that residents would have a chance to buy the parks, in which they now only rent space.

City officials are negotiating with the owners of several of the 30 other mobile home parks in Lancaster, Runner said.

The two mobile-home parks that the city has so far agreed to buy will be purchased through the sale of bonds.

Lancaster will use redevelopment funds from its multimillion dollar renovation program known as Operation High Desert Storm to buy the two fourplex apartment buildings at 45368 and 45404 Cedar Ave. for a total of $334,000, more than 9% above the appraised value, from owner David Schroeder.

It is cheaper, according to Runner, for the city to pay a little over the appraised value than to go through a costly legal battle to acquire the property.

The $4.75-million redevelopment plan calls for Lancaster to purchase and then tear down 20 small apartment buildings in a 95-acre area on Cedar Avenue between avenues H-8 and H-12. Owner-occupied housing, priced for median-income buyers, is expected to eventually be constructed by a private developer on the property where the crime-ridden apartments are located.

Lancaster has already negotiated with owners of 13 of the 20 four-unit buildings and has closed escrow on 10 of them, according to city records.

City officials said the improvement effort, announced in October, will take several years to complete.

A measure was also approved Monday to provide $200,000 for down-payment assistance to first-time home buyers in the Willow Creek Village development in Lancaster.

The owners of the development sell their townhomes on a rent-to-own basis. Prospective owners make a partial down payment before moving in and then pay monthly rent, with a portion being applied to the down payment. When enough money has been accrued, title of the townhome is transferred to the buyer.

Lancaster’s program would provide down-payment assistance in the form of a loan to lower-income households, such as a family of four with an annual income of less than $39,000. So rather than having to wait months to close escrow, a buyer could do so immediately.

By providing the loan, limited to 3% of the purchase price or $3,000, the city would be entitled to a share of the profits on the townhome’s future sale if it is sold to other than a lower-income household.

About half of the 168 remaining townhomes in the development are expected to be sold under the new assistance program, modeled after similar programs in other California communities.

The council’s actions Monday, said Runner, represent its commitment to providing opportunities for the American dream--home ownership.