City Weighs Compromise on Housing Requirement : Rancho Palos Verdes: Responding to judge’s ruling, council will vote on proposal to set aside at least four low-cost units at Ocean Trails, a posh coastal development.

Moving to satisfy a court order calling for affordable housing, Rancho Palos Verdes officials say they will require that at least four low-cost units be built as part of a posh coastal development of 80 luxury homes and a golf course.

The 261-acre Ocean Trails development also will be required to impose fees on the buyers of its $2- million-plus luxury homes to subsidize four more units of low- or moderate-income housing elsewhere in the city.

The requirements, approved unanimously by the Planning Commission this week, face a final vote by the City Council on Tuesday. They are intended to comply with a court order issued in July in connection with the Ocean Trails project, to be built on a stretch of coastline seaward of Palos Verdes Drive South.

In the order, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert O’Brien ruled that the project failed to meet state guidelines requiring affordable housing in new coastal developments. City officials and the project’s developers, Palos Verdes Land Holdings Co. and Zuckerman Building Co., have until Oct. 11 to submit an acceptable housing plan.

O’Brien did not specify how many affordable housing units must be built as part of the Ocean Trails project, but his ruling underscores a longstanding lack of affordable housing on the Palos Verdes Peninsula. According to a report last year by the Southern California Assn. of Governments, the peninsula has only 10 affordable units, and about 230 more are needed.

“This is one part of working toward that goal,” said Donna Jerex, associate planner for the city.

If built, the affordable units would be at least 775 square feet and include two bedrooms, enough for a family of four. In addition, employees of the golf course or the housing development would be given the first opportunity to rent the units, which may be built as a complex near the golf course.

The developers of Ocean Trails appear likely to accept the proposed city housing requirements. Adding four units to the project and four others elsewhere “is still viable, given some sort of improvement in the economy,” said Kenneth Zuckerman, president of Zuckerman Building Co. “Hopefully, it will meet the test of Judge O’Brien.”

But the Coastal Conservation Coalition, a consortium of environmental groups and a plaintiff in the lawsuit that prompted O’Brien’s ruling, said that eight units make up only 10% of the project’s housing supply. Other cities, such as Malibu, Santa Monica and Newport Beach, require that at least 20% to 30% of new units be affordable.

“There seems to be this hysteria that we are going to be inundated with people with shopping carts,” said Andrew Sargent, president of the Coastal Conservation Coalition. “We’re not talking about real low-income housing.”

City officials say that for now they plan to require housing within reach of a family of four with a “very low” income--no more than $24,150 a year. Based on the most recent Los Angeles County data, an affordable rental unit for such a family could not cost more than $604 per month.

But the city could also allow housing costing as much as $1,449 a month if it makes the units available to moderate-income families making up to $57,947 per year. Such housing would still be considered affordable, county officials say.

City officials said that requiring more than eight affordable housing units could threaten the economic viability of the project.

“We felt that this was a way to comply with the judge’s mandate that was ambitious and feasible,” Jerex said. “We didn’t want to make it so tough as to kill the project.”

The site also includes land preserved for wildlife habitat and recreation areas, limiting the amount of additional luxury homes that could be built, she said.

Ocean Trails is expected to generate about $500,000 annually in local tax money, a major boost for a city whose revenues plunged after the Marineland aquatic park closed in early 1987. The project’s 18-hole golf course, developers say, would be of the same caliber as Pebble Beach.

In its lawsuit, the Coastal Conservation Coalition claimed that the city failed to address a host of concerns ranging from coastal access to beaches to preservation of wildlife habitat. But O’Brien limited his ruling to the project’s lack of affordable housing.