Newest Affordable-Housing Complex Opening

Thousand Oaks officials will gather this morning for the grand opening of a new affordable-housing complex, one of four such projects underway in the upscale community.

Built on less than an acre at Sunset Drive, south of Thousand Oaks Boulevard, Sunset Villas will be restricted to very-low-income tenants--families of four must have an income of $37,350 or less.

The Area Housing Authority of the County of Ventura constructed and will manage the $2.58-million complex, which features 11 two-story, two-bedroom units with private backyards and Mediterranean architecture. The project received a $750,000 city grant as part of its financing.

At its meeting Tuesday, the City Council approved more than $1 million in loans to Many Mansions, a second nonprofit housing organization in town, to help it rehabilitate a 27-unit apartment complex near the Janss Marketplace and to build a second complex with 25 units designed to accommodate larger families.

These loans came four months after the council approved final financing for the 57-unit Oak Creek Senior Villas, another Area Housing Authority apartment project. The city contributed $3.6 million of the $11.46-million estimated cost.

“The city of Thousand Oaks is moving ahead as aggressively as we can to provide affordable units, and we’re working very closely with the two local affordable-housing providers,” said Russ Watson, housing and redevelopment manager for the city.

Sunset Villas becomes the Area Housing Authority’s seventh affordable-housing project in Thousand Oaks, according to Douglas A. Tapking, executive director of the municipal corporation, which serves those Ventura County cities without their own housing authority, including Camarillo, Fillmore, Moorpark, Ojai, Piru and Simi Valley.

Along with the 261 rental units that the authority manages in Thousand Oaks, it coordinates $4.4 million in rent subsidies through the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Section 8 program each year.

These federal payments made to landlords will be used to keep rents low at Sunset Villas, Tapking said. Although the units have a federally set fair-market rate of $1,189, those who move in next month will pay as little as $300 a month, depending on their income, with the balance made up by Section 8 funds.

The authority said rent on a two-bedroom apartment in the county averages $1,250, which makes it increasingly difficult not just for those with limited income but for the middle class--teachers, nurses, service workers and middle managers--to live in the county. A local family of four needs to make at least $43,207 to ensure that it pays no more than a third of its income for housing, according to that agency.

Because affordable-housing funds may become scarce in light of the state’s $35-billion deficit, Tapking said the authority probably will consider future projects in which only some of the apartments are set aside for those of low and moderate incomes.

Such concerns were not lost on the City Council when it voted on two, 40-year loans to Many Mansions, each with a 3% interest rate. The council approved spending up to $420,000 to help refurbish the 27-unit Warwick Apartments and up to $600,000 toward construction of Hacienda de Feliz, where nine of the 25 townhome apartments will have three bedrooms.

Since 1973, Thousand Oaks and its redevelopment agency have spent more than $18 million to support two dozen affordable-housing projects. By including four other housing projects where additional units were allowed as a means to encourage affordability, 1,572 units have been added to the city’s housing stock of more than 45,000 homes, apartments and condominiums, according to Watson. He said a regional estimate of housing need suggests that the city could use about 950 more units for low- and very low-income renters through 2005.

“I was shocked in discovering just how much the city has helped over the years,” said Rick Schroeder, who became Many Mansions’ executive director last summer.

The private, nonprofit organization will manage 375 affordable units in Thousand Oaks once Hacienda de Feliz is built, he said.