Housing Absurdities
With disappointing regularity, Orange County housing advocates struggling to provide more affordable homes, and residents hunting for that housing, are confronted with conditions that keep pushing their goals further out of reach.
The latest setback is in the federal Section 8 rental subsidy program that puts a cap of 30% to 40% of a recipient’s salary on what is spent for rent. The local office of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development pays landlords the balance.
The county reopened the waiting list for that program Friday for the first time since 1999. It expects 35,000 people to try to get on the new eligibility list for rental assistance. Unfortunately, according to Orange County Housing Authority officials, only about 75% to 80% of those approved for the subsidy will be able to find a landlord to accept it.
It wasn’t that way about 10 years ago when landlords, with lots of vacant apartments on their hands, offered incentives such as a free month’s rent to attract renters. With today’s vacancy factor down around 2% and plenty of renters willing to pay the average monthly rent of $1,200 or more, it is harder for people to find a landlord willing to accept the vouchers.
Other golden opportunities for affordable homes, such as the former Marine Corps airfield at El Toro, are being lost.
More than 1,100 homes there once used by Marines and their families have been sitting vacant for nearly two years while thousands of families are forced to move to other counties, or wind up homeless, because of the county’s critical shortage of low-income housing.
The Board of Supervisors unanimously voted to consider converting that housing to civilian use. But that sensible approach was shot down by Irvine officials--a casualty of the bitter battle between the board majority, Irvine and other South County cities over the future use of the abandoned air base.
The county board wants to convert the former airfield into a commercial airport. Irvine is leading a drive to make it a giant central park. But nowhere in the proposed park’s 4,700 acres is there a provision for affordable housing.
Rep. Darrell E. Issa (R-Vista) tried to salvage some use of the idle housing. He wanted it made available as interim low-cost homes for Marine families at Camp Pendleton, where nearly 2,000 families are on housing waiting lists. But several weeks ago the Navy rejected that request. It said the El Toro homes were too far from Camp Pendleton and the 30-mile commute, coupled with rising gasoline costs, would put too much strain on too many “fragile household budgets.” That’s the same situation that thousands of civilian workers on traffic-choked freeways are forced to face every day.
So, in a county that the state estimates will need an additional 75,000 homes by 2005 to meet its growth needs, the last really large piece of vacant land left to accommodate a sizable number of homes lies fallow.
In the meantime, communities try to cope with the housing need. In Laguna Beach, where home prices are among the highest in the county, the city is helping two key public safety and health officials buy homes in the city. Because of its limited road access and constant threat of emergencies, such as landslides and floods, the city decided it was crucial to have certain emergency personnel living locally.
The problem in Laguna Beach, as in so many other cities, is that city staff, police officers and firefighters can’t afford the high-priced housing. The same is true for others whom residents so heavily rely on, such as teachers, nurses and child-care workers.
The business community has long been aware of the need for more affordable housing to maintain an adequate labor pool. The problem became so acute for the universities that UC Irvine and Cal State Fullerton found it necessary to develop their own housing stock to attract the faculty and staff they need.
But it’s not only market conditions that have been making solutions so difficult. The NIMBY (not in my backyard) attitude of many residents and public officials also works to keep more affordable housing out of reach. That’s evident in redevelopment plans under discussion in Costa Mesa. Residents want to replace old, crowded rental units with new single-family homes. In public hearings they openly insist that redevelopment rid the neighborhood of all the low-end renters. Some city officials seem only too happy to comply, showing little concern for what will happen to the people displaced.
As long as attitudes like that prevail, affordable housing will remain out of the reach of too many residents, and the entire community will be poorer for it.