Simi Panel Backs Housing Plan for Low-Income Seniors

A large development that includes 136 apartments for low-income seniors has won a key vote of confidence from the city--but questions remain about federal subsidies crucial to its financing.

As now proposed, the 43-acre project at Madera Road and Presidential Drive includes the city’s first major residential-care facility, the senior apartments and 75 single-family homes.

The 97-bed residential care facility--by far the largest proposed in Simi Valley--would provide meals, housekeeping and other services to seniors living in the center. The apartments would be reserved for low-income seniors.

The city Planning Commission voted 5 to 0 Wednesday to recommend approval of the development, but key financing for the senior apartments could be in jeopardy because the developer, Kaufman and Broad, may not have all the approvals it needs to move forward.

Depending on how the California Tax Credit Allocation Committee interprets the situation, the apartment portion of the project--required by the city as a prerequisite for the larger development--could lose more than $7 million in federal subsidies, officials say.

Tax credits would pay the lion’s share of the $11-million apartment project.

The committee, a state agency, provides the credits to developers, who sell them to investors to raise money for construction. The investors can use the credits to reduce their tax burdens.

By law, projects using tax credits must receive all local approvals subject to public comment within 270 days of reserving the credits, officials say.

The deadline for this project is today, committee spokesman Stan Devereaux said.

But the City Council will not consider the project until June 15, and the developer will not have its development permits until then.

If an applicant misses its deadline, the tax committee would have to cancel the financing reservation because there is no authority for the committee to give any kind of extension, officials say.

Representatives of Kaufman and Broad this week offered differing views on the financing. While project manager Tom Erickson said the company met the deadline months ago, company spokesman Eric Lieberman said the project needs City Council approvals to meet its deadline.

“We’re working . . . through that” with city officials, Lieberman said.

But city officials said they are not involved in the tax-credit problem. Planner Jim Lightfoot said company representatives told the city they had an extension from the state.

The loss of tax-credit financing could have a major effect on the larger development proposal. In a May 4 letter to the city Planning Department, Scott Choppin of Kaufman and Broad said the loss of tax credits would “jeopardize the entire project, including the assisted-living community.”

Planning Commissioner Michael Piper said if Kaufman and Broad cannot fund the senior apartments, “then the entire project becomes unfeasible, not just a piece of it.”

In fact, Piper and other commissioners took steps Wednesday to ensure that Kaufman and Broad could not open the highly profitable single-family homes without first completing the affordable senior apartments, barring the company from opening the homes without the apartments.

Kaufman and Broad spokesman Lieberman assured the commission that the company would build the apartments first, but he conceded that “those assurances begin to weaken” if his company does not get tax-credit financing.

The tax credit committee has only once in the past decade taken credits away from a developer, officials say.

Any delay in the project would hurt the effort to develop affordable senior housing in Simi Valley, an area suffering from an acute shortage.

The city’s affordable housing projects generally have vacancy rates of less than 1%, and senior affordable housing is even more scarce, said James Purtee, a senior city planner.

“Some of the existing [senior housing] projects aren’t even taking names because the waiting list is so long,” Purtee said.

According to city records, the city has only 345 affordable senior housing units. The Madera Road project must dedicate all of its 136 apartments to low-income seniors to qualify for federal tax credits. There also is a need for residential-care facilities, with only 127 beds for a senior population that is expected to reach 10,000 in the next two years, Purtee said.

Neighborhood Council member Norma Coony said she supported the idea of a residential-care facility. “I think there’s a place for it in Simi Valley,” she said.

She added, with a laugh, “I’m probably going to be needing it myself.”