Public Housing Development to Open New Doors for Families
The first time Christina Garcia noticed the construction on Hillcrest Drive, she assumed it was going to be just another apartment complex she and her husband couldn’t afford.
“I had driven by them, and I had thought it was another expensive apartment building going up,” Garcia said.
Instead, Fiore Gardens is going to be Garcia’s new home, the first place the 23-year-old mother of three can call her own. Since her marriage six years ago, she and her husband have lived with her parents in Thousand Oaks.
They have looked long and hard for an affordable apartment in the Conejo Valley, but with three children and only one income, it has been impossible to find one.
When Fiore Gardens--named after longtime Councilman Alex Fiore--opens next month in central Thousand Oaks, it will provide homes to 50 low-income families like Garcia’s.
The complex represents a seven-year cooperative effort between the city of Thousand Oaks and the federal government, possibly the last public housing complex of its kind to be built in Ventura County. The county’s Area Housing Authority, the agency that disburses funds from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, will own and manage Fiore Gardens. But the complex was built on land bought by Thousand Oaks.
Not only did the city spend $2.9 million for the five-acre parcel of commercially zoned land, it also put in an additional $230,000 to enhance the design, making it palatable to a city that prides itself on well-kept neighborhoods. The result is low-income housing that looks better than some condominium complexes.
“This is the lowest density rental housing ever built in the city of Thousand Oaks,” said Olav Hassel, the city’s housing services manager.
There are 10 units to an acre at Fiore Gardens, Hassel said, compared to an average of about 20 units in most complexes in the city.
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Giving people--especially families with small children--that kind of room to move around in is far preferable to the towering public housing complexes of decades past, said Caroline Briggs, executive director of the Area Housing Authority.
“My sense is that had we been building public housing to this low density all along, you wouldn’t be hearing the horror stories that you do about public housing,” Briggs said.
HUD spent $4.9 million on Fiore Gardens, but housing officials said the complex is probably the last of its kind to be built directly by the federal agency. In the future, public housing is likely to be built through cooperative efforts between cities and nonprofit agencies, using tax incentives and donated land.
“It’s going to be more of a group effort kind of thing in the future,” said Dick Parke, the Area Housing Authority’s director of housing development. “I really feel that the government is getting out of it.”
The cream-colored stucco complex on the south side of Hillcrest near Hodencamp Road reflects many of HUD’s strict requirements: no tile in the kitchens, no carpets, small bedrooms and no dishwashers.
But the apartments hardly look like barracks, thanks in part to the city’s $230,000 and an additional $300,000 contributed from the housing authority’s reserve fund to enhance the design.
A curved fence snakes around the back of the buildings, dodging old oak trees that arch over the Conejo Creek below. Each apartment has a slightly different entryway--an arch here, a portico there, a just-planted green vine already twining its way up a doorway.
“It gives it a little more individuality,” Parke said.
The units face tiled courtyards, with kitchen windows aligned so parents can watch as their children play in the enclosed area. Each home has a small patio. Three units are equipped for the disabled.
From upstairs bedrooms, the Santa Monica Mountains show green and rugged against the skyline, and light pours into the rooms. As Parke leads a tour, he points out the buffed handrails on the staircase with the critical eye of one who knows woodwork.
“Whoever did these handrails did a really nice job,” he said. “I was a cabinetmaker for 30 years so I notice these things.”
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Parke has already walked through and inspected every apartment, flushing toilets and turning on garbage disposals to make sure they work. The final step is getting a certificate of completion, which the agency plans to apply for on Tuesday. After that paperwork is processed, families will begin to move in.
Most of them are from the Conejo Valley. Originally, HUD said applicants had to come from all over Ventura County but lifted that requirement in December. All of the families have been carefully screened by the housing authority.
“We want to make sure that they’ll take care of it,” Parke said, standing in one family’s future living room. “We just don’t want them to come in here and trash it.”
Tenants will pay one-third of their income in rent, regardless of what that income is.
Fiore Gardens is within walking distance of shopping centers and many of the city’s social services operations, including the Conejo Valley Family Health Clinic, where Garcia takes her children.
“I can just walk over there with my kids, because we only have one car now,” she said.
Garcia said she is relieved that the long hunt for an apartment is over. In the past, apartments have been out of her price range, or landlords have come up with excuses not to rent to her.
One woman who will be moving in with her teenage daughters asked not to be named but said she is grateful to be given the opportunity to get back on her feet financially. Living on infrequent child support payments and the small salary of an administrative assistant, she hasn’t been able to make rent payments on the condominium where she lives. For the sake of her children, she has wanted to remain in Thousand Oaks, but the dearth of affordable housing has made that hard.
“After I got divorced I wanted to stay in the area for my kids, to give them some stability,” she said. “But I’ve been struggling to stay in the area.”
Fiore Gardens will be a lifesaver for her, she said.
“They’ve made it so that people will still have their privacy and they have made it very attractive,” she said. “It’s not some place that you would be embarrassed living.”
