Planners Say Upscale Project Must Have 10% Moderate Units : Oxnard: Stand reflects a political shift in support of affordable housing. Developer says it will appeal the condition.

Taking a firm stand in support of affordable housing, the Oxnard Planning Commission has insisted that a portion of a new subdivision near the Oxnard Airport be moderately priced.

In a sign of Oxnard’s shifting political winds, the commissioners on Thursday made clear that their vote to support the Patterson Park project depends on the developer’s willingness to make at least 10% of the 216 units affordable to families with moderate income. The firm, Laguna Pacific Development Corp. of Santa Barbara, plans to appeal the condition when the project goes before the City Council, spokesman Bob Fowler said.

“Building affordable housing is largely a matter of political will,” said Commissioner Victor Fontaine, who was appointed to the panel last year. “Let’s just agree to do it.”

City planners added the affordable-housing provision to the conditions of the project just two weeks ago, prompting a protest from the developer, which argued that it had already spent more than a year in planning.

On Friday, Community Development Director Matt Winegar said the condition was added because of the City Council’s renewed interest in affordable housing since the election of three housing advocates in the last year.

“Because of council and commission discussions on housing, it was the conclusion of city staff that this project should participate in the city’s housing program in some way,” Winegar said.

After the commission action, Chairman Ralph Schumacher said he has noted a strong shift at City Hall in favor of affordable housing, but the commission has received no explicit instructions, he said.

“We haven’t received any marching orders, but we sense what is happening,” Schumacher said.

As a result of the increased interest, Winegar said planners will provide the city’s decision makers with a more thorough evaluation of the city’s lack of progress in meeting its affordable-housing goals this year. And the council has created an ad hoc committee that will investigate how the city can provide more low-income housing.

According to advocates for the city’s low-income residents, the new attention to affordable housing follows a decade of neglect.

Grant R. Specht, an attorney with the nonprofit Channel Counties Legal Services Assn., told planning commissioners Thursday that the city has done little to meet the housing goals contained in the General Plan adopted in 1989.

Nearly half of Oxnard’s households earned a low or very low income in 1989, Specht said. As a result, the city set a goal in the plan’s housing element to create 1,550 housing units--later revised upward to 1,719--for low- and very-low-income residents by 1994.

With less than a year left in the five-year period, no low-income housing has been constructed in the city, all sides agree.

“Unless you review the housing element and determine how the goals can be met, the city is simply thumbing its nose at the General Plan,” Specht said.

Part of the problem, Winegar said, is the difficulty of relying on the private market to produce housing for lower-income residents. While the city may require most developers to include moderately priced housing, Winegar said the city will have to rely on nonprofit agencies to build lower-income housing.

Winegar added that the apparent shift in political support for affordable housing follows a decade of emphasis on upscale housing, which followed, in turn, a decade of support for lower-income projects. In the 1970s, he said, so much low- and moderate-income housing was built that regional planning officials said the city had more than required.

In the 1980s, Winegar said, the council sought upscale housing to attract professionals. “Oxnard was providing most of the lower-income housing for much of western Ventura County, while professionals had no choice but to go to the hills of Camarillo and Ventura. The council made a determined effort to provide that sort of upscale housing.”

Last month, another poverty-law firm--California Rural Legal Assistance--sued the city, seeking immediate payment of $539,000 in redevelopment money that was supposed to go for low-income housing but has been withheld until 1996.

Despite their criticism of the city’s recent record on housing, advocates applaud what they say are signs of gathering political momentum in favor of affordable housing.

“There has been a shift in Oxnard, particularly since the election,” said project manager Jess Ornelas of the Cabrillo Economic Development Corp. The nonprofit firm specializes in constructing low-income housing through the use of tax-credit financing and other subsidies.

“Whereas before we used to knock on the door and nobody was home, now we’re asked in and there’s dialogue,” Ornelas said. “We have people on the council now who see all sides of their community, where in the past the lower-income segment was swept under the rug.”

Barbara Macri-Ortiz, an attorney for Channel Counties Legal Services, said the firm is studying ways to challenge the city if it fails--as seems inevitable--to meet its affordable-housing goals by 1994.

“I’m not willing to concede that the General Plan is just an advisory document and ignoring it has no legal repercussions,” Macri-Ortiz said. “Between now and 1994, affordable housing has to be given top priority.”