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Adding up how SCAG housing plan expected to affect Antelope Valley
Southern California Association of Government
30,639 should be for above-moderate-income households;
18,499 should be for very-low-income households;
12,554 should be for moderate-income households; and
11,661 should be for low-income households.
Palmdale would be expected to add 17,910 of the new dwelling units, or 24% of the total, and Lancaster would be expected to add 12,799 units, or 17% of the total.
Of the 17,910 new units assigned to Palmdale, where an estimated 145,468 people reside in approximately 41,393 existing units:
7,583 new units, or 42%, would be for above-moderate-income households;
4,481 new units, or 25%, would be for very-low-income households;
3,024 new units, or 17%, would be for moderate-income households; and
2,822 new units, or 16%, would be for low-income households.
Of the 12,799 new units assigned to Lancaster, where an estimated 143,818 people reside in approximately 42,374 existing units:
5,501 new units, or 42%, would be for above-moderate-income households;
3,144 new units, or 25%, would be for very-low-income households;
2,165 new units, or 17%, would be for moderate-income households; and
1,989 new units, or 16%, would be for low-income households.
The state's definitions for each income category depends upon the number of persons in a household, the level of annual income each household and the county in which the household is.
For a one-person household in Los Angeles County, "very low income" is defined as earning $25,900 a year; for a four-person household, "very low income" is defined as earning $37,000 a year.
For a one-person household, "lower income" means earning $41,450 a year; for a four-person household, it's earning $59,200 a year.
For a one-person household, "moderate income" is earning $47,500 a year; for a four-person household, it's earning $67,800 a year.
City must plan more low-income housing
Palmdale pushed to have 'fair share' of regional housing needs
This story appeared in the Antelope Valley Press on Friday, July 13,
2007.
By BOB WILSON
Valley Press Staff Writer
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PALMDALE - Southern California 's regional planning agency approved plans requiring Palmdale to accommodate construction of 17,910 new residences over the next seven years, of which 10,327 - or 58% - would be for households with moderate- or below-moderate incomes.
Palmdale officials had appealed the allocation after its announcement in February, saying it was impossible to meet even though Palmdale has been among California's fastest-growing cities for more than decade, but the vote Thursday by the Southern California Association of Government governing board left the numbers unchanged.
Only one member of the 77-member Regional Council, a representative from Orange County , voted against the final plan, SCAG spokesman Jeff Lustgarten said.
The vote represented the culmination of more than a year of technical analysis, policy debate and local interaction, Lustgarten said.
"Today's action represents an essential step in Southern California 's short- and long-term efforts to meet the housing needs of its residents," said SCAG President Gary Ovitt, a San Bernardino County supervisor.
Today, the association and other regional bodies will turn their adopted plans back in to the state housing department, which will consider adopting its final housing plan on Sept. 11.
The housing numbers were allocated because of state laws requiring California cities and counties to provide their "fair share" of housing to meet regional needs. Those needs are assessed by the California Department of Housing and Community Development and listed in a report called the Regional Housing Needs Assessment.
The assessed numbers are provided to agencies, called councils of government, authorized by the federal and state governments to plan for regional growth. SCAG is the agency for Los Angeles , Orange , Riverside , San Bernardino , Ventura and Imperial counties.
The association presented the state's assessments to Southern California counties and cities in February, giving them 30 days to file requests for changes.
To conform to the state's final plan, the association's member jurisdictions must revise the Housing Elements of their respective General Plans by June 30 to reflect how each city and county will accommodate the housing-growth numbers.
Asoka Herath, Palmdale's director of planning, on July 5 advised the five members of the Planning Commission of the need to update the city's Housing Element.
Except for the city of Los Angeles and the county as a whole, Palmdale will be responsible for adding more very low-, low- and moderate-income housing than any other community in L.A. County , Herath said.
"We don't know if we can achieve that (requirement) or not. That's why we appealed the allocation," Herath told the planning commissioners.
Failure to meet that goal is expected to bring no punishment, Herath said later.
"To my knowledge, there are no penalties for noncompliance with the Regional Housing Needs Assessment," he said.
Cathy Creswell, deputy director of the Housing Policy Development division of the Department of Housing and Community Development, confirmed there are no formal penalties for failing to add the housing units listed in the assessment document.
The numbers are intended to be the basis of the city's new Housing Element, not the number of actual dwelling units, Creswell said.
"There is no obligation to build," she said. "The obligation they have is … to ensure that they have provided the framework and the zoning and the development standards so that if the market is there, then development can happen."
"If they have adopted their Housing Element, including those numbers, and are in compliance, that means that the local government has set the table by … making sure they themselves aren't putting any constraints on the development of that housing," Creswell said.
If development fails to occur, area jurisdictions should consider whether their development standards are impeding growth, she said. "But there is no penalty if those numbers don't happen. The penalty would come only if they are out of compliance and they haven't planned appropriately."
However, "there are funds that cities have access to if they are in compliance," Creswell said, citing Community Development Block Grant funds, first-time home buyer funds, work force housing funds and public improvement grants that might be unavailable to noncompliant jurisdictions.
"If you are in compliance, we try to reward you and try to help you implement the numbers, and if you are out of compliance, there are legal risks that you bear," Creswell said.
In general, the state "does not sue directly" when jurisdictions fail to submit acceptable Housing Elements, she said. "It's through private litigation" in which private builders sue cities and counties because their Housing Elements have been out of compliance.
Members of the Palmdale City Council were of varying opinions on what the state's expectations might mean for Palmdale.
Mayor Pro Tem Mike Dispenza, who until June sat on SCAG's governing board, said Palmdale could lose state revenue if it falls short of the numbers required.
Those numbers will be required "over a period of years," not every year, and overall, the city has met and exceeded its growth requirements, Dispenza said.
Because the city does not build residential units, it must rely on private firms to meet the goals set by the state, he said.
In some instances, the city has provided financial incentives to the builders who have been willing and able to help the city meet those goals, Dispenza said.
"We have to comply (with the state's numbers) or they take us to court, and then they withhold money that the state owes us" from tax revenues, he said.
Since its inception, the city never has grown fast enough to meet the nearly 18,000-unit goal that has been set by the state, Dispenza said.
That kind of growth will be more difficult to accomplish in the future "because we have a water problem here," he said.
"We have water suppliers saying they are not going to give us any more water, and the state saying we've got to build these homes, so it's a Catch-22 that we're in," Dispenza said.
In addition, the market for housing is in a slump, and finding developers willing to build during a slump will be difficult at best, he said.
"To be told that we need 1,700 houses in certain price ranges every year is just not reachable, as far as I'm concerned," Dispenza said. Nevertheless, "They are going to hold us responsible for it."
"This is not something where they've said, 'We'd sure like you to do this.' This is a mandate that the state gives us with punitive damages attached to it," Dispenza said.
"I would say most cities in the state are going to have a problem" meeting the state's growth goals, "so there are probably going to be some lawsuits over this," he said.
Cities may have to sue on the basis that the numbers are unrealistic under the current conditions, Dispenza said.
"I think there's going to be problems, and I think the Legislature is going to have to look at this to see what happens when bureaucrats just dole out numbers without looking at the problems of particular areas and without looking at economic conditions," he said.
"Everything is possible, but is it probable? I don't think so. I think the probability of us not meeting this number is very high unless a lot of conditions change," Dispenza said.
Mayor Jim Ledford said he believed state housing officials focus on the city's compliance with updating its Housing Element, not on whether the city actually meets its housing numbers.
"The Housing Element has to be in compliance, and I believe ours is now and will be for next year," Ledford said.
The punishment wielded by the state housing department "is the withholding of federal dollars if you are not in compliance - even though I don't know of any community that has been hammered" for noncompliance, he said.
A Housing Element that is in compliance with the requirements "establishes an opportunity for these (dwelling) units to be developed either by the private sector … or the city" via financial incentives, Ledford said.
"I don't see this (growth) happening overnight, and I'm not so sure it's something we are actually looking to encourage," Ledford continued. "I'm not looking to be the low- and moderate-income housing center of the (Antelope) Valley.
"We may have some of the more affordable housing in the ( Southern California ) region, but I don't want to have the 'cheapest' housing in the region," he said. "We will let others have that dubious honor."
At present, the city's redevelopment agency collects revenue amounting to roughly $5 million or $6 million a year that must be applied to affordable housing, but that money won't fund the amount of construction required to meet the housing goal set for Palmdale, Ledford said.
"SCAG should be talking about providing resources to help handle growth, not just assigning it," he said. "There are communities that I don't believe have any intention of complying with a Housing Element, much less building something. So my question is, what are they going to do about those communities?"
Councilman Steve Hofbauer said he believed Palmdale was required "to provide the opportunity" for builders to construct new homes by providing the land-use zoning needed for such development.
"You can't put constraints in (the General Plan) to prevent (that construction) from happening," said Hofbauer, who served on the city's Planning Commission for 11 years.
On the other hand, the city also cannot compel builders to buy land and construct homes that appeal to specific income levels, Hofbauer said.
If development constraints are part of the city's Housing Element, the state may reject the element, "and then you aren't eligible for a lot of different state-funding programs," he said.
Those programs help the city provide mortgage assistance, rebuild blighted housing and offer incentives to companies that build affordable housing, Hofbauer said.
The city's redevelopment agency is required to use 20% of its tax income for affordable housing, and failure to do that may put the continued operation of the agency in jeopardy, he said.
Palmdale's redevelopment agency is responsible for the development of the Antelope Valley Mall, the Palmdale Auto Center , the renovation of downtown, the construction of senior housing and other projects, Hofbauer said.
Loss of the agency would bring development in the city to a grinding halt, he said.
"That's how the state gets its hooks into you," he said.
The problem is that state leaders "are trying to apply solutions to problems in Silicon Valley to communities across the state," Hofbauer said.
Councilman Steve Knight said he was "not too concerned" about the state's housing numbers because they appear flawed and because "I'm not looking to hurt the city by constantly bringing in low- and moderately-low income housing to abide by SCAG, when we've got to look out for what's best for Palmdale."
"To my knowledge, there's no penalty for not abiding by (those numbers)," Knight said.
Further, the city cannot control the home construction industry's interest in Palmdale, he said.
"Are we going to say, 'Hey, you can come on in and build, but you have to build where we tell you … and what we tell you?' " Knight asked. "That doesn't sound like America to me."
"So I'm not too overly worried about it. We have a very good General Plan and a very good idea of what the city is doing and where we want it to go, so I'm not going to get too muddied with these figures from this governmental agency," he said.
"I would love to see if Palmdale or any city that doesn't abide by this what they would do, because I've never heard of a penalty or what their authority is," Knight said.
Councilman Tom Lackey said meeting the state's housing numbers "will definitely be a challenge for the city.
"To be honest, those kind of (housing) numbers I've really not paid that close attention to" prior to his election to the council in November 2005, Lackey said. "There are a lot of people who are uncomfortable with the growth that's already taken place" in Palmdale.
"Growth is definitely controversial, but how do you stop it? That's the true question," he said.
"We all know that growth is coming … but the speed at which it does so is really the issue," Lackey said.
According to current projections, the population of California is expected to double by 2050, he said. "I would be interested to know what the accuracy rate has been over the last 10 years, but we as a city government cannot ignore those projections."
"We have to do what we can to adjust and try to meet the needs of our community, growing or not growing," Lackey said.
Compensating for growth "is not a new challenge" for Palmdale or its municipal leaders and employees, he said. "This is something that we will take on and do as well as anybody or even better."
bwilson@avpress.com