Rental Plan Favoring City Workers Criticized

For years, Port Hueneme has provided cut-rate beach-side apartments to some city workers--including the acting housing director--who could not afford the high-rent area.

Some housing advocates have begun questioning whether the practice is fair considering that records show hundreds of poor families will wait years for an apartment.

At the city-leased Seaview Apartment complex, 18 city employees pay $402.50 or $492.50 per month for two- or three-bedroom apartments, less than half the market average.

The city’s acting housing director, Olivia Ward, moved into the Seaview complex more than 10 years ago, before the city adopted an employee-preference rental policy. Ward earns the highest salary of city workers living in the complex, $67,080 a year, according to officials.

Ward noted she is one of four city employees living in the building who did not receive an apartment under the 1990 policy. She also emphasized that her salary supports a household of six.

“I’m not going to get into my personal reasons for being there, and I do have them,” Ward said. “I think where I choose to live is my personal business. There are residents whose incomes are considerably higher than mine [living there].”

The city’s preference policy was enacted to provide low-wage city workers an affordable place to live “for a period of time until he or she could get their feet on the ground,” former Mayor Dorill B. Wright said.

But employees have not been required to move out even as their salaries increased, because the city’s policy has no time or income limits. As a result, some city workers have lived in the complex for many years.

“It sounds like . . . a certain small group of people essentially got a gift from the government for a long period of time,” said Barbara Macri-Ortiz, an attorney with Channel Counties Legal Services Assn. who represents low-income tenants. “Is government there to serve the people, or is it a private little club where people who work for government get the best advantage?”

Among the other city employees who are Seaview tenants are two police officers, a police dispatcher, the deputy city clerk, an account clerk, two community development technicians, a recreation department assistant and a housing specialist, said Karen Jackson, the city’s human resources director.

These city workers earn considerably less than Ward, from a part-time parking enforcement officer making $9 an hour to a public works technician who earns as much as $45,264 annually, Jackson said.

Government workers, however, are not the only ones enjoying cheap rent in the complex. All tenants in the 90-unit building are free from income and time-limit requirements. According to city records, one tenant was earning $80,000 a year at one point.

Of the 84 tenants living at Seaview in March, 23 reported monthly incomes above the “very low income” levels set by federal housing authorities. A family of four with an annual household income below $34,250 is considered very low income and below $50,200 is considered lower income, according to HUD.

“Is it right? That’s a hard question,” Councilman Anthony Volante said of the city’s rental policy. “It’s just something that we allowed to have happen over the years.”

Local housing advocates question how the city could provide cheap housing without imposing income and time-limit requirements on tenants.

“We would like to see those units available to people with low incomes,” said Douglas Tapking, director of the Area Housing Authority of Ventura. “It seems a little strange that someone who is earning $80,000 a year could be living in a subsidized apartment complex.”

“I don’t understand why the city is doing that,” added Lee Riggan, executive director of the Commission on Human Concerns, a private nonprofit agency that assists poor families. “I’m really surprised. I wish we could use this property for affordable housing.”

The council in March asked to review the salaries of all tenants when the city decided to sell the Seaview complex, which the city has offered for $6.36 million. Council members said they wanted to determine what families would face hardship after the building is sold and rents increased.

The city has had the option to sell the property since 1996, when its lease agreement with HUD--which holds the mortgage on the property--expired.

Councilman Jon Sharkey said he was surprised to learn there are several tenants who are not considered low-income. Only four tenants at Seaview use Section 8 vouchers to pay their rent.

Sharkey said the city should have reviewed the policy sooner to prevent people who could afford market-rate rents from taking advantage of the system.

“My position has been, if this is a publicly owned building, we have an obligation to operate it in the public interest,” Sharkey said.

City Council members said they have no problem with Ward living in the building, noting that her firsthand experience at Seaview benefits all tenants. But they acknowledge that a policy that allows anyone--no matter what their salary--to rent an apartment in the building is questionable when there are so many low-income families looking for housing.

Although the city’s policy states that city employees must be selected by a committee of department heads before they are granted units at Seaview, Ward said her staff usually determines who will live in the complex.

The employee’s monthly income, current monthly rent, time employed by the city and the number of months spent on the waiting list for Seaview are calculated to determine the employee’s eligibility for low-rent housing at Seaview, according to the city’s policy.

Meanwhile, there are currently 484 families in the city who can expect to wait at least two years for a vacancy in one of the 459 low-income units in Port Hueneme, according to Ward’s records.

However, city policy dictates that of the 116 people currently waiting for a vacancy at Seaview, the four who are city employees are likely to wait the least amount of time.

Tapking of the county Area Housing Authority said he wouldn’t approve a similar practice in his jurisdiction.

Unlike Port Hueneme’s Housing Authority, government employees are not given preference for public housing within the area covered by the county housing authority, which oversees Camarillo, Newbury Park, Thousand Oaks, Fillmore and Simi Valley.

Tapking said affordable housing is so scarce in Ventura County that within three weeks this year, 1,173 people had applied for 400 Section 8 vouchers. He said there isn’t enough housing to spare for government employees.

“It sounds like they’re taking advantage of a lower rent,” he said. “That’s somewhat disturbing. The [city] policy needs to be reviewed.”

In theory, Port Hueneme’s policy sounds like a good idea, said Lisa Safaeinili, a spokeswoman for Many Mansions, a nonprofit agency that provides low-income housing.

Without the incentive of the low rents, she said “they may not be able to fill positions and they’d have to go to the taxpayers and get more money to pay them more. So everybody benefits.”

But Macri-Ortiz called the practice “discriminatory.”

“[The housing director] is hired specifically to find housing for low-income people,” she said. “She is taking away a potential housing opportunity for a low-income person. I’d be embarrassed.”

Meanwhile, the city is requiring potential buyers of the apartment complex to provide “a program to soften any rent increase” for all tenants once the building changes ownership, said Greg Brown, the city’s community development director.