Board Agrees to Study Using El Toro Housing

After months of delaying, Orange County supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to consider converting parts of the former El Toro Marine base into affordable housing and housing for the homeless.

The idea, which is politically sensitive because of the ongoing debate over making El Toro an airport, was added to the board’s agenda by Supervisor Tom Wilson, the board’s strongest advocate for converting base housing.

“We need to take advantage of the housing on the base,” Wilson urged his four colleagues. “For a minimum amount of money, we can at least explore what can be done.”

At least twice before, Wilson tried unsuccessfully to get fellow board members to consider using some of the more than 1,100 homes and other military housing available at the huge, 4,700-acre former military facility.

Originally, a housing tract with more than 850 homes that once housed Marines and their families was scheduled to be razed and the remaining dirt used as fill for building a commercial airport.

But since the passage of the anti-airport Measure F has put airport planning on hold, it could be years before county voters would be able to consider the project, as required by the ballot initiative.

In the interim, Wilson contends, base housing could help shelter the homeless, generate county income and provide plenty of affordable housing while easing the county’s critical housing shortage. Supervisor Cynthia P. Coad also has proposed using military housing as a shelter complex for emancipated youths, people who were in foster care until they reached age 18.

But the board’s pro-airport majority of Chairman Chuck Smith, Jim Silva and Coad balked at any discussion of housing plans after they learned that the city of Irvine, in an effort to stop an airport, sought to annex the former base.

Smith said he is willing to talk about the county’s proposed use of El Toro military housing but is worried about the city’s annexation plan.

“The problem is to get Irvine to drop their attempt to stop the airport by annexing the base and killing the housing deal,” Smith said in a telephone interview. “If we let Irvine annex, they’ll kill it. Can you imagine Irvine letting affordable housing in their city? They will not let it in, I guarantee it.”

But Irvine executive assistant Dan Jung countered that the city has had recent success at adding affordable houses and apartments within city limits.

Smith supports state legislation that would bar Irvine from annexing the former base. “I believe it’s a solvable problem and the answer is at the state [Capitol],)” he said.

But in August, Assembly Bill 1556 stalled in a Senate committee. It would have blocked Irvine from annexing the base for at least 180 days after it is turned over to the county.

Assemblyman Lou Correa (D-Anaheim) sponsored the bill, saying that it was about housing, ‘not about the El Toro debate.” However, a Senate analysis of the bill said the county already has the power to prevent annexation by declining to sign a needed property tax-exchange agreement with the city.

Irvine Mayor Christina L. Shea portrayed Smith’s comments as a pro-airport ploy “to pressure Irvine’s council into supporting an El Toro housing plan.”

“Our prime focus is to beat the airport, and I’m not going to be hoodwinked into supporting this affordable housing element by dropping our annexation proposal to the base,” she said. “I will not back down on our annexation project.”

But Shea did not rule out opening negotiations on the housing proposal with county board members, including Wilson, whose district includes El Toro.

As directed, county staff will prepare an affordable housing presentation for the board at its Oct. 3 meeting.