Cities Balk at Home-Building Rules

During the recession years of the 1990s, the state postponed a program that required local governments to plan for housing construction to meet California’s future population growth.

Now that the economy is thriving, the program is back and the tussle over how to divide up the responsibility for the housing is heating up again, particularly in Southern California.

The six-county region that stretches from Ventura County south to Orange County and east to the Inland Empire is expected to take in an additional 2 million people by 2005--the equivalent of relocating the residents of Houston to the Southland.

To accommodate that growth, the state in December 1998 announced that Southern California cities and counties had to plan for the construction of 625,000 housing units, for all income levels, by 2005.

But the state lowered the allocation the following month to 504,000 units at the request of the Southern California Assn. of Governments, the planning and policy research agency whose members complain that the region is already built out.

Orange County’s goal is 75,000 homes, including 25,000 units for households earning less than $48,000 a year.

Now, the association is lobbying the state to lower that figure again, saying the state formula is flawed.

But state housing officials don’t appear willing to back down a second time. So, the stage is set for a confrontation next month over the future of housing in one of the most expensive and overcrowded markets in the world.

The cities and counties that received the allocation would not build the housing units themselves, but they would be required to draft housing plans to accommodate construction by developers through zoning changes and other policy decisions.

If local cities and counties fail to do so, they will be ineligible for certain state housing funds and will be vulnerable to civil lawsuits by developers and others.

Advocates of low-income housing are urging the state to stick to the current numbers.

“We are growing, and if we don’t have enough housing, we are going to have what we have now: The price of housing goes up and up and up,” said Beth Steckler, a spokeswoman for the Southern California Assn. of Non-Profit Housing.

The outcome could be significant because it could prompt other regions in the state to appeal their housing requirements too.

Allen Baldwin, a longtime housing activist in Orange County, said he believes that maybe 10% of the housing goals will be met. But, he said, nothing would likely be built for the poorest residents, those earning less than $20,000 a year. “I don’t think any jurisdiction in Orange County will have any success in producing a substantial percentage of that housing.”

One reason is that too many homeowners oppose low-income housing partly because they fear it lowers property values, he said.

“We just don’t want it as a community,” Baldwin said.

The housing allocation numbers are issued every five years by the state Department of Housing and Community Development under a program called the Regional Housing Needs Assessment.

The program was put on hold in the recession years of the early 1990s, when housing construction slowed dramatically. It was relaunched in late 1998, with the state eventually mandating that the Southern California agency divide the responsibility for 504,000 housing units among its 183 cities and Imperial, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties.

After the agency parceled out the second round of housing allocations last November, 45 cities and counties in the region appealed to it with suggestions that their overall allotments be lowered by a total of 75,000 housing units.

The allotment given to each city and county includes specific numbers for the low-, moderate- and above-moderate-income housing units needed in those municipalities. In some cities, nearly 50% of the housing was designated for low-income residents, which some analysts think is the primary reason for the opposition.

The protesters argued that it would be impossible to meet the state’s demands. Some officials also complained that the state calculated the housing needs with out-of-date data, including figures from the 1990 census.

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The loudest complaints came from inland areas, especially Riverside and San Bernardino counties, where much of the population growth is expected.

San Bernardino County Supervisor Kathy Davis said that according to the agency’s numbers, the unincorporated areas of her county must plan for construction of 8,000 units each year for the next five years. But she pointed out that barely 800 total units are being built in those unincorporated neighborhoods each year.

Such complaints are echoed in the cities of Riverside and Lancaster and in southeast Los Angeles County, which is home to some of the most densely populated cities in the state.

David Ledbetter, an associate planner in Lancaster, said the state numbers require his city to plan for 1,238 new affordable housing units a year. But he said for the past 10 years, new households in Lancaster have been built at a rate of only 617 a year.

“We are not saying that long term the Antelope Valley is not going to grow,” he said. “It’s just not all going to happen in the next five years.”

Riverside Planning Director Steve Whyld said his city is appealing its allocation of 8,748 units by 2005, arguing that more recent statistics about vacancy rates and other data indicate that the number should be closer to 6,300 units.

The 27 so-called gateway cities in southeast Los Angeles, such as Downey, Huntington Park and Lakewood, were assigned to plan for about 15,000 housing units by 2005.

“That is a tough task to achieve when you have built-out cities,” said Richard Powers, executive director of the Gateway Cities Council of Governments. Nine of the cities in his organization have appealed.

Agency officials struggled for months to try to readjust the allotments among its 189 members.

But now Executive Director Mark Pisano has said the agency itself plans to submit an appeal to the state next month on behalf of its entire membership, asking state officials to consider new data about military base closings, growing vacancy rates and family growth rates.

Julie Borstein, director of the state Department of Housing and Community Development, said she is willing to consider the agency’s appeal, but she stressed that the state believes the overall predictions for growth are accurate.

Borstein noted that if the state agrees to lower the numbers for Southern California, the housing numbers for the rest of the state must be increased by the same amount.

Urban planner and author William Fulton said the debate has grown more contentious because most Southern California communities can no longer meet their housing demands by expanding to undeveloped land.

“Our ability to sprawl outward is becoming constrained,” said Fulton, who is based in Ventura. “We can’t sprawl our way out of this problem.”

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Steckler, of the nonprofit housing group, pointed out that the state’s allocations do not address the existing housing shortage that plagues most Southern California cities.

She noted that in Los Angeles, 1,940 new housing units were built between 1998 and 1999, but the city’s overall population grew 65,000 people.

“You can say that we are all built out, but the truth is there are more people coming every day,” she said.

Fulton and other planning experts say the only way to meet the expected population influx may be for Southern California cities to plan for higher-density development--a notion that most politically influential homeowner groups vehemently oppose.

Los Angeles City Councilman Hal Bernson, another agency representative, said predicting the outcome of this debate “is like predicting the stock market.”

But he was certain of one thing: “It’s going to be a very thorny fight,” he said.

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Times staff writer Daryl Strickland contributed to this report.