Habitat for Humanity, City May Team Up to Build Affordable Homes

A perennial attempt to build affordable homes in the city might be getting some much needed help from the nonprofit charity group Habitat for Humanity.

City officials and a local representative of the group are discussing working together to save a three-year effort to build affordable homes next to a downtown shopping center.

Plans to build the 50 homes on eight acres owned by the city’s Redevelopment Agency called Gisler Field )have been stymied by costs and objections from neighboring homeowners.

Last year, after three unsuccessful attempts to come up with a workable plan to build affordable homes on the land, the city decided to sell the property to a private developer. Officials conditioned the sale on the developer making eight of the 50 homes affordable to low- and very low-income residents--families of four earning from $29,550 a year to $41,600.

But no developers came forward that could do the project, said Redevelopment Agency Manager Steven Hayes.

“It just didn’t pencil out,” Hayes said.

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Frustrated city leaders were left scratching their heads about what to do.

So Hayes approached Ralph Belknap, chairman of the site selection committee for the Ventura chapter of Habitat for Humanity.

If the city can find a developer that would set aside eight improved lots, Habitat would find the volunteer workers and donated supplies to build the homes, Hayes said.

The City Council will consider tonight sending the plans for the property back to a committee, which would consider the offer from Habitat for Humanity and reformulate the development.

Belknap emphasized that at this point nothing has been agreed upon.

“These are ultra-preliminary discussions,” Belknap said.

The city may again consider offers from other groups.

One of the many plans considered for the property came from the Cabrillo Economic Development Corp., a nonprofit organization that builds low-income housing throughout the county, which offered early last year to build 50 rental units that would after 15 years be sold to first-time buyers.

As rentals, the project would bring in state and federal grant money, making it easier to complete, but city leaders said they were committed to building affordable homes for sale.

Moorpark is suffering from a lack of affordable rental units and a lack of affordable homes for sale. In the last five years no rentals have been built in the city and only about 25 “affordable” homes have been built, city officials said.

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The problem the city must work out before negotiating anything with Habitat for Humanity and a new developer is lowering the price of the land, according to some city officials.

The property was bought to help remedy that situation.

The city’s Redevelopment Agency purchased the land in 1993 as part of a 30-acre parcel that cost about $5.5 million.

Half the land was sold for $3.5 million to a developer who is now building a supermarket, restaurants and multiplex theater.

Of the remaining property, half was bought by the park district for $500,000 to build a downtown park and the rest of the land--valued at $1.5 million--was to be used for the affordable housing project.

The high value of the land makes it difficult to set aside improved lots for eight homes and build the rest of the homes at a cost that is reasonable, said Eloise Brown, who will be sworn in tonight as the newest member of the City Council. Right now it would cost about $68,000 for the land and improvement for each of the lots, which is too expensive, she said.

Although Brown said she admired the work of Habitat for Humanity, she said it was too soon to tell if the city would be working with the nonprofit group.