Whatever happened to property rights in this country? It’s bad enough fighting off eminent domain takings for the past 10 years only to open the California Section of today’s LA Times to see the above the fold headline. “Irvine is told it MUST add 35,600 homes.”Note: Emphasis added by me. I cannot find anything in my US or CA Constitution that mentions an organization named SCAG, which has the power to tell us what cities must do to satisfy them. SCAG, the Southern CA Assn. of Governments, needs to be challenged. In the article it states that “about 40 percent of the 700,0000 new homes slated for the southern Californian area must be designated as intended for low-income or very low income families according to the plan.”So for those who are not in either of these categories, and purchase any of these new homes, you will be subsidizing these classes by paying higher prices. The builder is surely not going to take a reduction in his or her profit margins and eat the difference.
And you think they have a problem in Anaheim with the Disneyland private property owner land usage debate.
Comments welcome.
PS:
And you think we have a traffic bottleneck near the El Toro Y today? Where is the SCAG/OCTA solution for this aspect of an EIR?
Larry,
Your post and that of the Winships is misleading. The City of Irvine knows darn well, they need to meet a certain threshold of affordable housing. Every city does.
The fact they built new homes and did not allow themselves to make some of them affordable housing units is the mistake of the city.
Affordable housing units are all subsidized by the Government regardless of where they are located. Irvine is not any more special than any other city, although many of its residents would like to think so.
The entire purpose of having affordabele housing is the very same reason why Irvine lacks them. They simply dont want poor folks living in their areas, so this Govt. agency was designed, and rightly so.
In addition, the affordable housing median, is not as low as you think it is. It runs around 70K per household.
Perhaps this is what developers want?
This gives an excuse to build more and higher density housing. If you cram and stack enough, even at $70K per household you can get a lot of money out of a plot of land. Developers can claim they were forced to build high density housing. The city can claim it is not their fault.
In the end, we have a lot more people in each plot of land, and healthy profits for developers.
Is this really a property rights issue?
Luis.
What’s misleading about my reporting the exact words from the liberal left LA Times?
Further, the members of SCAG are not even elected by you nor I.
I do like your point about what is considered “affordable housing median.” In reality no OC housing is affordable for a vast majority of those renters in OC these days.
Government subsidy? Luis. Your words not mine. “Affordable housing units are all subsidized by the Government regardless of where they are located.” Are you smoking something? Who do you think owns the property, builds the project, and sets the resale pricing? The Santa Ana or Irvine City Council. I respectfully, don’t think so!
While our government mandates the affordable units, it’s the property owners/developers who build the units and make or lose money on their investment risk.
The city of Irvine does not care if you are white, black, yellow, green or brown. Nor do they care if you are wealthy or not. If you can afford to purchase homes sold by the “private sector” than you will not be faced with discrimination. Don’t let our readers think that elected officials control who can and cannot move into our cities. This story is not about government constructed tenements such as those which I saw in my youth be it in Newark, NJ or Brooklyn, NY.
Thanks for your thoughts anyway.
Mr. Bannister. Thanks for your well thought out comments.
Wait to you see the 35 story buildings going up all over the city of Irvine. Specifically, in the Great Park where there are developer agreements. You are correct. This action supports the need for “going up” rather than “going out” to meet future housing needs. Over the next decade we will have the Borough of Manhattan duplicated here in the southland.
Larry,
I respectfully disagree with your analysis of who wins and who loses. Developers do not lose when they have requirements for affordable housing mandated by the Government. Profit levels are the same regardless of the market.
Government does subsidize the differences to the developers through various means, but most commonly through bonds. Bond which otherwise they would not qualify for.
The city of Irvine does care who lives in their cities, because it is what drives home prices up or down. Whether it may not be the PC thing to admit, it does happen.
If Irvine had been doing what it was supposed to do in regards to affordable housing to begin with they would not find themselves in this position.
The elitests on the right want folks to think that “affordable housing”, I prefer the term “workforce housing”, is somehow like the projects or housing tenements. If it is done correctly it would have little or no effect on the housing costs in the area. If you sprinkle the workforce housing in amongst the regular housing tracts it will work just fine. It is when you build tracts made up solely of workforce housing that you may see problems.
Elitests also try and paint a picture of who it is that will be living in these homes. They are not the dregs of society that some would have you think. We all know how the right has villified the poor and this is just another attempt to portray them as some sort of boogeyman.
Gee- what great timing SCAG…release a report like this just as Irvine citizens are gearing up for a grass-roots fight to save some unique attractions (ie:Wild Rivers etc.). So Irvine “Must” build tens of thousands of new homes? Who says? How about a real investigative look at the possible backdoor dealings between SCAG and large developers. This report is nothing more than a sweet gift to the Irvine Co. Most Orange County residents know that Anaheim politicians are not the only ones that bend over for corporate interests. Way to go Irvine!
Irvine already has 20% set aside housing and the Irvine Company accepts Section 8 Vouchers from low income tenants. It’s the best kept secret in town.
Luis.
You are partially correct.
Developers of affordable housing can apply for tax credits. In addition, where there is an active community development agency, they can apply for a portion of the 20 percent set aside for the gap if in fact funds exist in that account. Further it becomes a jurisdictional issue that is not always black and white. We are not sure of any inclusionary requirements which also enter into the picture when it comes to available funds for these projects.
Not a simple yes or no asnwer but it is a case by case basis and varies city by city.
“What’s misleading about my reporting the exact words from the liberal left LA Times?”
I guess if you folks keep repeating this sort of stuff it will make it the truth or at least the truth as you see it.
Truth be told the new Los Angeles Times publisher David Hiller is former official in the Reagan Administration. Besides working for Reagan he clerked for Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart and is friends with Kenneth Starr and Don Rumsfield according to Rick Reiff of the Orange County Business Journal.
The Times, which is owned by the Tribune Co., is hardly a bastion of liberalism.
Sean. When compared to the OC Register I think you would agree that they are a “bastion of liberalism” between our two major papers.
Sean –
This past April the Tribune Company accepted Sam Zell’s offer to buy the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and other media outlets. The Tribune Company also sold the venerable Cubbies to Zell with the provision he not sell the team until the conclusion of the ’07 season.
The Times had extensive coverage on the Chandler family fued and the Trib’s decision to sell. Sorry you missed the thorough and investigative reporting that was done on this topic.
#12
Let’s assume for the moment that you’re correct about the LA Times being a “bastion of liberalism” (LOL).
That makes the OC Register a “bastion of conservatism”.
And then so what? What’s the point?
Newsweek leans left. Time leans right. Yada yada yada. Pointing out the political leanings of a print media source is such a tired argumentative cliche.
20% set aside
Housing and society are shaped like a pyramid. With the wealthy, large, expensive homes and families at one end the high density apartments and huddled masses at the other end. (or top and bottom for elitists)
Could it be that the 20 percent set aside for “huddled masses “ is the reason that the 80 percent or more live in over crowded conditions?
The pyramids have stood the test of time with their broad base sustaining and holding up its upper levels for thousands of years.
I think our “jenga” style of housing, where more and more of the base (huddled masses ) housing is bulldozed under to add more high end housing to the top end will be our downfall.
If the current real estate slump continues on the path it is on Irvine, and many other cities, will meet their affordable housing requirements with existing housing stock!
I was a volunteer on planning committees over 10 years ago. We were told that low income housing was to start in two years. I heard that statement for 4 years before I moved on. The developers keep renegotiating how much land use they can access and the low income housing promises have been set aside year after year after year. There IS a habitat for humanity project in westpark. There is also an affordable access housing project at Walnut/Harvard going up.
But basically the Irvine company has been given free reign to ignore and modify the master plans of the city in exchange for tremendous profits.
I think the responsible thing to do would have been for Irvine Co. to have planned in their promised percentage of low income housing as they built each of the new neighborhoods over the last ten years. It will be an absolute mistake to lump all the affordable housing into one area where it may gain a poor reputation or expectations that are not 100% favorable as they are in all of the other neighborhoods.
Cook.
That “20 percent set-aside” concept was created by the CA Legislature in connection with all of the community redevelopment agencies where a floor is established as soon as a project is approved by a government body such as a city council. Floor relating to the tax increment above the base year of the agency.
In Mission Viejo our RDA was formed in 1992/03. Property taxes of all properties inside that project area were frozen. All future tax increases, such as the new tax base of our renovated Mall are kept by the local CDA and are set aside into various buckets including the 20 percent for affordable housing. Another chunk is given to the impacted school district.
As usual folks…several of you
have forgotten the “unintended
consequences” of demanding more
affordable housing for Irvine or
any other City by these unelected
and controlled State Agencies and
the adhoc SCAG group.
With the Great Park..available..
what is to stop Irvine from joining
Santa Ana….and building TEN
32 Story Brownstones which are both commericial and residential.
Hey, they would have a wonderful
view of Orange County Airport too!
Talk about a throw-back to Soviet Russia and the Eastern Europe block. Low cost housing needs to be spread out evenly and throughout community to ffectively not innundate one area and make it both a ghetto candidate and a serious crime problem. It may
sound good now…but in five years
the problems could be overwhelming.
“what is to stop Irvine from joining Santa Ana….and building TEN 32 Story Brownstones…”
First of all, where does Santa Ana have “TEN 32 Story Brownstones”?
Secondly, and more importantly, this is simply the typical fearmonger approach to the low income housing issue…namely, paint a picture in everyone’s mind that if low income housing goes in, it will inevitably be a “Cabrini-Green” style housing “project”…you know, the awful “projects” that didn’t work in cities like Chicago.
But those projects perfectly illustrate what happens when you try to hide all low income folks in one place. Urban planners have learned from those mistakes. The chances of THAT style of housing going into Irvine are nil, so stop the simplistic fearmongering.
N2justice.
LA has a great solution to the housing obligation problem. Let’s build 250 square foot apartments. In this approach, building high density, high rise apartment houses, you would not require too much land area to satisfy the recommended affordable low-income housing obligations. At the same time you could control the size of their families by restricting them to live in a space smaller than our 16 x 18 foot living room.
Is that what you want? That’s what is in the news right now!