Thousand Oaks Council OKs Plan for Affordable Housing

After some heated haggling about how best to rank priorities, the Thousand Oaks City Council has approved a detailed housing strategy for the next five years.

Mayor Elois Zeanah, who helped draft the 200-page document, ended up in solitary opposition to the Comprehensive Housing Affordability Strategy late Tuesday night.

She cast the lone vote against the report, she said, because her colleagues changed the emphasis from maintaining existing stock to building new low-priced dwellings. Both Zeanah and Councilwoman Jaime Zukowski have repeatedly voted against proposed affordable housing projects, on the grounds that they are too crowded and too close to busy streets.

Rather than encourage more development, Zeanah said she would like the city to focus on helping young families purchase homes now on the market, through down-payment assistance programs or low-interest loans.

“I think this community would be happy to know we were helping first-time home buyers purchase existing homes, rather than putting them in high-density projects in undesirable areas,” she said.

But during the half-hour debate, council members Judy Lazar and Frank Schillo lobbied successfully to bump the first-time home buyers programs to No. 2 on the priorities chart. At the top of the list, they inserted a commitment to provide land and other resources for new, affordable developments.

“If we emphasize (maintenance of existing stock), I don’t think we’re fulfilling our requirement for providing affordable housing,” Schillo said.

That comment drew an angry response from Zukowski, who preferred the original emphasis but nonetheless voted for the revised document. “You’re just looking at the raw numbers,” she told Schillo, “not at how to create a healthy, integrated and balanced community.”