No Simple Solution

A booming economy is good news for rich and poor alike, as President Kennedy noted with his memorable metaphor “A rising tide lifts all boats.” But the boatless ones, whose families can barely keep their heads above water at today’s housing prices, might well see things differently.

That is why news that heavy demand and scarce supply have pushed Ventura County home sales and prices to their highest level in nearly a decade is one more illustration that shaping land-use policy for the next century is a challenge too complex to be summed up on a bumper sticker. A state agency concerned with affordable housing last week expressed concern about Ventura County’s proposed Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources (SOAR) initiatives, which would require voter approval before cities could allow development outside designated boundaries.

The state Department of Housing and Community Development notified Thousand Oaks that the city may be unable to provide enough housing in the future if voters approve the growth-control measures this fall. Officials from the agency said they intend to take a look at every other city with a SOAR measure on the ballot--Simi Valley, Oxnard, Camarillo, Santa Paula and possibly Moorpark--to make sure each can shoulder its share of the regional housing load if the measures become law.

State law requires each city to draw up a plan that provides for housing to be built for all income levels. But once the plan is approved, there is no follow-up to ensure which portions of it are actually carried out--other than via lawsuit. Because of political and economic pressures, it’s not surprising that the upscale housing tends to get built while the low-income accommodations languish.

SOAR organizers took these requirements into account in drafting their initiatives; each version includes an exemption that would allow cities to stretch their boundaries a bit to add low-income housing. But the passage of SOAR would only increase the incentives that have produced the current imbalance.

Linking the need for affordable housing and the SOAR initiatives perpetuates the assumption that new homes--for any income level--can only be built by continuing to nibble away at the green spaces that separate our cities. With or without SOAR, that old style of urban sprawl and the public policies that encourage it must change. That point was dramatized by the release of a new edition of the state Department of Conservation’s Farmland Conversion Report, considered by most agricultural experts to be the most authoritative tally of farmland losses in California.

This report, covering the two fiscal years beginning in 1994 and ending in 1996, shows that Ventura County lost 1,383 acres of farmland to urbanization during that time--more than the 1,032 paved over during the prior two years but less than the 1,000-acre-a-year average of the previous decade.

More startling, the report showed that land committed to nonagricultural use--properties that were still being farmed but had already been rezoned to allow development--nearly quadrupled, suggesting that a far more significant loss of farm and ranch land is underway. The spirited political battle in 1995 over a SOAR measure in the city of Ventura no doubt contributed to that trend.

Such figures add to the sense that Ventura County’s traditional slow-and-steady approach to development is changing.

There is no question that the county’s population will continue to increase, thanks to the children of current residents as well as a steady stream of newcomers. According to a study recently approved by the Southern California Assn. of Governments, Ventura County’s population is expected to rise by 31% to 932,000 by the year 2020.

There is also no question that all these people will need places to live. Last month Ventura County home prices rose to their highest level since 1990. If the population increases as predicted without parallel amounts of new construction, it is a safe bet that home prices and rents will continue to climb.

It is neither realistic nor legal nor fair to close Ventura County’s borders to those who cannot afford to live here--even if they were born here. The SOAR measures may not make it impossible to meet the county’s future housing needs but they would hardly make it easier.