OXNARD : Task Force Suggests City Build 900 Homes

A special affordable-housing task force on Tuesday recommended that Oxnard City Council build 600 low-cost dwellings in the next five years by reworking its finances.

But council members, who created the task force to develop an affordable housing plan, said most of the task force’s recommendations will never be implemented.

The Affordable Housing Ad Hoc Committee, made up of local business and community leaders, concluded last month that the city needs to build more than 900 affordable dwellings by 1996 to meet its own housing goals. The committee’s report also suggested that the homes should cost much less than the city has proposed.

By redirecting federal and redevelopment funds, Oxnard could afford to build 600 low-cost homes over the next five years, the report found. The city could also meet its housing objectives by giving developers more incentives to build affordable dwellings in the city, the task force concluded.

“There are some very salient bits of information,” Councilman Andres Herrera said. “Some are workable; some have already been implemented.”

Oxnard Mayor Manuel Lopez said the report is a valuable source of information, but no substitute for the city’s current affordable housing policy.

“I believe that the value of the report will be that we can consult it in the future when we are discussing affordable housing,” Lopez said.

The committee was created by the City Council a year ago to draft a five-year affordable housing plan. Its members were asked to review the city funds available for housing, previous attempts to create low-cost homes, and possible sites for such projects.

Among the conclusions of the report was that Oxnard needs to hire a city staffer to work with the city manager on low-cost housing and steer projects through the bureaucracy.

“It may not be appropriate to hire an expediter,” Councilman Tom Holden said, “but it may be a good idea to assign someone else in the city to take on that duty.”