Study Points to New Type of ‘Migrant Worker’

The lack of affordable housing for people laboring in the burgeoning service industries has spawned a new type of “migrant worker”--people employed in Thousand Oaks who can’t find a place to live here.

“When this community began in the ‘60s, people lived here and commuted out; at that time you might have called us a bedroom community, but that’s changed,” Senior City Planner Lawrence Marquart said.

Instead, Thousand Oaks has become something of an economic hub, with workers driving in for jobs at shopping malls, office buildings and restaurants scattered around the city, according to the yearlong housing study that will be presented to the City Council on Tuesday night.

The study, required by the state, also discovered that an increasing number of younger workers are commuting to Thousand Oaks from western Ventura County and the San Fernando Valley.

The employment gains, coupled with the housing shortage, could contribute to such countywide headaches as traffic jams on the Ventura Freeway and increased air pollution.

“Not everyone can afford--or wants--a four-bedroom house on a half-acre lot,” City Councilman Andy Fox said. “You need housing that people who provide services can live in. You need a certain amount of reasonable rentals so people can live where they work.”

The dearth of affordable housing became an issue last spring when city inspectors uncovered a veritable shantytown of migrant workers living in garages and tin sheds in the shadow of the Civic Arts Plaza.

But the latest study indicates these poorer residents are not the only ones shut out of the Thousand Oaks housing market.

“When we’re talking affordable housing for low-income people, we’re not talking about welfare recipients,” said Dan Hardy, executive director of Many Mansions Inc., a nonprofit group that provides low-cost housing.

For instance, according to state guidelines, single people are considered low income if they make as much as $25,680 a year--a good salary, but not enough to pay high rents in upscale Thousand Oaks, where an average one-bedroom apartment goes for $775 a month, Hardy said.

And according to 1995 state Employment Development Department statistics, 75% of the Thousand Oaks labor market is in the service industry, where the average annual salary runs $26,755, or in retail trade, where the average is $16,708.

“People who work here can’t afford to live here,” Hardy said. “My feeling is we should be sharing more with the people who are serving us.” His agency has a package of proposals on affordable housing before the City Council on Tuesday.

One major obstacle to finding more affordable housing in this well-planned city is that it’s nearly built out. Concerns about suburban sprawl in the 1970s, when the city’s population more than doubled in 10 years, led to curbed growth and an embrace of open space.

“We need places to live for entry-level teachers and entry-level professionals,” Fox acknowledged. “But if it means more of an influx of new development, I wouldn’t be supportive of that.”

The answer to the housing shortage, Fox argued, lies not in more developments, but in work being done by Many Mansions. The 19-year-old organization has made its mark by acquiring blighted properties and turning them into clean, well-kept affordable housing.

Hardy concurs with the city’s slow-growth attitudes, but he said there are only so many crime-ridden complexes that his organization can turn around on its budget.

The city’s Redevelopment Agency earmarks more than $2 million a year for affordable housing projects, but federal housing cutbacks have made the job tougher for organizations such as Many Mansions.

Hardy also cited the Planning Department’s study, which acknowledges the city has fallen far short in providing affordable housing for its low-income residents.

From 1989 to 1996, based on data from the Southern California Assn. of Governments, the city estimated that 1,673 housing units were needed for low- and very low-income people--only 246 were built: just 14.7% of the goal.

“Some of it is the NIMBY syndrome here,” Hardy said. “Not in my backyard. Many people have moved out here from L.A. and they want to leave affordable housing behind.”

But according to the Planning Department’s study, presented to the Planning Commission last month, there are more roadblocks to affordable housing than there are residents who don’t want less desirable residences in their backyards.

“Construction costs for rental units, similar to homeowner units, can be very expensive,” the housing study states. “There is little profit margin for developers to undertake new construction of rental units.”

The study, the first since 1992, lists the most pressing housing needs for Thousand Oaks, where nearly 75% of the households fall in the high-income category. The needs include maintaining and adding new affordable housing units and ensuring that all people have equal access to housing.

In an effort to alleviate the affordable housing shortage, the City Council will be asked Tuesday to approve a number of recommendations from Many Mansions. They include:

* Expanding the opportunities to build “granny flats”--small, inexpensive satellite apartments or cottages built on a lot with another house.

* Encouraging developers to include a number of affordable units in all new housing developments.

* Finding ways to incorporate affordable housing into existing structures rather than building new developments.

Toward that end, the council will also be asked to provide as much as $2.7 million so Many Mansions can purchase the blighted Island Village apartments and convert all 80 apartments into housing for low- to very low-income people.

While recognizing the need for more housing, Fox said the trick is not to go overboard.

“We have a real need for affordable housing, but it needs to be for the residents of Thousand Oaks,” he said. “We don’t need to become the affordable housing capital of Ventura County.”

Gammon is a Times correspondent, and Folmar is a staff writer.