Group Says It May Sue Oxnard Over Project Vote

The City Council’s rejection of a 94-unit apartment complex has the developer threatening legal action and has reignited the debate over the need for low-income housing.

In a 4-1 vote, the City Council on Tuesday rejected the Vineyard Gardens Apartments, proposed for a five-acre tract in El Rio, because the development failed to conform to planning guidelines.

Neighbors who had fought against the project exulted in the move, while affordable housing proponents were aghast that the city could pass up such an opportunity. The project was the largest low-income proposal ever in Oxnard that did not seek city subsidies.

“It was a political decision,” said Barbara Macri-Ortiz, who represented the Carpinteria-based developer that proposed the project. “We walk in with 94 units with zero subsidy and they throw that out the door because they don’t want to hurt their compadres’ feelings, and it’s a disgrace.”

A week earlier, she said, the city had approved a near-$300,000 subsidy for just four homes aimed at low-income farm workers.

But Ray Amaro, a resident who helped lead the fight against the complex, said the council’s decision was right not only for the neighborhood but for the people who would have lived in the new apartments.

Opponents had argued that the influx of 300 residents would have overburdened a community that lacks recreational facilities and a grocery store and has an overcrowded school system.

“The community would have been devastated,” he said. “There’s no facilities, there’s nothing to accommodate them. [The developers] were putting the cart before the horse. Where can [the residents] go to play? Where can they go to study? Where can they shop?”

Macri-Ortiz said Wednesday that project backers were considering filing a suit that would seek an injunction banning all development in the city, except affordable housing proposals.

Such an action would mirror a 1994 suit, in which a coalition of law firms sought to halt all development in Oxnard until the creation of a state-certified housing plan to shelter the poor.

That suit was settled, and the city agreed to revise its housing plan. But affordable-housing advocates believe they may have the legal ammunition to back another lawsuit.

In a letter sent Monday, the California Department of Housing and Urban Development told city officials that their current housing plan did not meet the provisions of state law, including identifying adequate sites for housing of all income levels. As recently as June, city officials were including the Vineyard Avenue parcel--rejected by the council Tuesday night--as a potential site for affordable housing.

Municipal documents show the city has built only 42% of the low-income housing it had aimed to construct between 1989 and last year, and critics question the validity of even those figures.

“We will have a very well-organized and prepared attack,” said Macri-Ortiz, who was involved in the 1994 suit. “The city has some real potential liabilities and damages.”

Among those potential liabilities, according to an attorney representing the project’s financial backers, is $8.4 million his clients stand to lose if the apartment project is not approved.

Tuesday was the last opportunity for the development to win approval, because the hard-won tax credits that would be used to finance it expire Aug. 28.

On Tuesday, discussion of the complex revolved around arcane technical provisions of the city’s planning laws.

The council came to the conclusion that under the city’s planning guidelines, the project was not allowed on the site and that much-needed stores would better serve the community. But project supporters argue that city regulations did allow the development to be built there.

“They were playing a technical game,” Macri-Ortiz said. “Their own General Plan does not support their position. It’s so insulting.”

Councilman Dean Maulhardt said Wednesday that the site was simply inappropriate for housing, citing the swift-moving traffic on Vineyard Avenue as proof.

“I’m concerned about the safety of residents,” he said. “This is a land-use issue. I don’t have any problem in approving low-income housing, but there is no reason it can’t be built to provide a quality life for the people that live there.”

But Eileen McCarthy, an attorney for the Oxnard office of the California Rural Legal Assistance Migrant Farmworker Project, said the new apartments would have been affordable for people making minimum wage who are now forced to live in much worse conditions.

“It’s unfortunate the City Council chose not to act in a more enlightened and progressive manner,” McCarthy said. “Housing for poor people is desperately needed and this was a vote against that.”