Council: Think Citywide

One item on the City Council’s agenda today touches on the sensitive intersection between Los Angeles’ affordable housing crisis and a community’s right to decide for itself how surplus military property should be used.

It also raises a challenge to the unspoken rule that council members know what is best for their districts and may proceed without significant interference from their colleagues. It’s time that someone shook that rule to its foundations.

The issue is what to do about 545 middle-class homes in the Harbor City and San Pedro areas that were occupied by Navy families until two years ago, after the closure of the Long Beach Naval Shipyard. They are in Rudy Svorinich’s 15th City Council District, which extends from Watts all the way to San Pedro.

Svorinich and a handpicked community committee want to preserve only 56 of the units to house the homeless. The rest would either be razed, moved or used for student housing for the private Marymount College, a new campus for the private Rolling Hills Preparatory School and facilities for the Harbor/UCLA Research and Educational Institute.

Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski is engaged in the rare exercise of challenging a council colleague on the basis of what is best for the city as a whole. She’s pushing a motion that would preserve up to 303 of the homes as permanent or transitional housing for the homeless.

The debate here is an outgrowth of a 1987 federal law that gave homeless organizations first crack at surplus military property and direct application access to the federal government, without any community input.

The law was superseded in 1994, giving community “reuse” committees the right to produce their own proposals based on development needs. They still had to provide “reasonable” help for the homeless, with the final decision left to the federal government.

That, says Svorinich’s office, is exactly what the San Pedro Area Reuse Committee has done with its proposal. Svorinich also notes that his district already has thousands of public housing units and shelter beds.

Miscikowski’s challenge is both simple and compelling. How can the city eliminate so many viable homes in the face of one of the nation’s most critical housing shortages? Moreover, she would strip only the Rolling Hills private school from the equation. The council should vote to preserve more of the units as housing for those in need.

Yes, council members represent their own districts, but they are first and foremost beholden to the needs of the city as a whole. The city needs housing. That’s what the council must remember today.