Thousand Oaks Panel Pushes Plan for Affordable Housing : Development: Officials want to sprinkle lower-priced homes within upper-middle-class tracts. They oppose high-density projects.

The new members of Thousand Oaks’ Housing Issues Committee have set themselves a paradoxical goal: to bring about change by emphasizing continuity.

As they map out the city’s housing strategy, Mayor Elois Zeanah and her three-member committee envision a future much like the present, with an emphasis on roomy single-family homes, spacious back yards and quiet residential neighborhoods.

But within these upper-middle-class tracts, they would like to see a sprinkling of more modestly priced homes, available to low-income residents or first-time buyers. Outwardly indistinguishable from the pricier models, these lower-end houses might have stripped-down interiors, or might be subdivided into several apartments.

“We can have them look like normal houses,” said committee member and Planning Commissioner Linda Parks, “so they don’t stick out in the neighborhood.”

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Known as “inclusionary housing,” this approach rejects high-density affordable housing projects in favor of camouflaged single-family homes. Parks, Zeanah and Councilwoman Jaime Zukowski are now pushing this concept.

“There’s a stigma when we stick the label of ‘affordable housing’ on something,” said Zukowski, another committee member. “It’s not about how many low-income units we can build, but about whether we can provide simple, healthy housing for the community.”

But changing the city’s strategy will not be easy, officials say. And even one committee member, Planning Commissioner Mervyn Kopp, is skeptical of his colleagues’ ability to realize their goals.

“It’s nice to say we should drop affordable units here and there so they won’t be noticed, they won’t be different, they won’t be more dense,” Kopp said. “But how do you do that? So far, they haven’t come up with an answer, except to say we should try.”

The city already has some incentives in place to encourage developers to consider affordable housing.

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For example, Thousand Oaks’ growth-control ordinance exempts units set aside for low-income residents. Thus, while developers normally compete each year for a limited number of building allotments, they can win the right to construct more homes if they keep some units in the “affordable” range.

Thousand Oaks defines low-income residents as those earning no more than 80% of the county median. This year, the cutoff works out to $55,200 for a family of four.

With land prices so high, developers can build homes available to these income levels only by increasing the number of units per acre. An affordable condominium complex south of Borchard Road, for example, squeezed 30 low- and moderate-priced units into two acres and still left the builders with only an estimated 7% profit margin.

“If dirt costs a lot of money, you have to fit more homes on that dirt to lower the price,” Kopp said. “Sometimes, you gotta give something to get something.”

The Housing Issues Committee’s goals, including inclusionary housing, are contained in a draft Comprehensive Housing Affordability Strategy, which is available at City Hall and the library for public comment.

Other objectives listed in the document include:

* Lengthening the amount of time that “affordable” units must stay in the hands of low- or moderate-income residents, from 15 years to 30 years;

* Developing more services for battered women and children in Thousand Oaks;

* Encouraging the city to donate three more parcels of land to Habitat for Humanity to build homes for low-income residents;

* Strengthening the city’s down-payment assistance program to help first-time home buyers, especially those interested in purchasing resale houses instead of brand-new units.

While the City Council will discuss all these goals next month, the issue of affordable housing promises to be the most contentious.

Zeanah and Zukowski have opposed most projects for low-income residents on the grounds that they are too dense, too close to busy streets, or too crowded for young families. Rejecting those arguments as a smoke screen, their colleagues have at times accused Zeanah and Zukowski of trying to hide their general distaste for affordable housing.

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In that touchy atmosphere, Zeanah and Zukowski and other committee members have sparked some controversy with their preliminary pronouncement emphasizing “inclusionary housing.”

“It plays well on TV and in the press when you come up with a slogan like ‘inclusionary housing,’ but it doesn’t change much,” Councilman Frank Schillo said. A longtime member of the Housing Issues Committee, Schillo lost his seat when Zeanah reorganized the council subcommittees in October.

Councilwoman Judy Lazar, also bumped off after three years on the committee, agreed that the strategy was “not new--just difficult to achieve.”

In addition to persuading developers to support the inclusionary housing concept, Lazar said, the city would have to change public opinion.

“Most people who buy $400,000 homes expect to have the same income level throughout the project,” Lazar said. Also, she pointed out, lowering the prices on some units--even if they had fewer amenities or smaller interiors--could raise the cost of the remaining market-rate homes.

“The goal,” Lazar said, “should not be to make the rules so restrictive that we are not able to build any affordable housing at all.”