OJAI VALLEY : Freeze on Housing Likely Until 1992

It will be another year before a freeze on residential construction in unincorporated Ojai Valley eases and builders on a waiting list can get permits, under a proposal the County Board of Supervisors will consider Tuesday.

The earliest permits would be issued to some of the 209 people on the waiting list in 1992, the report says. Some would have to wait as long as an additional three years.

The projections are in line with those given when the freeze went into effect in 1989, said Steve Wood, program manager for the county’s resource management agency.

At that time, county planners discovered they had issued too many residential building permits during the previous 11 months. The clerical error occurred when planners were updating the Ojai Valley Clean Air Ordinance, which has limited residential construction in the smog-prone area since 1982.

When planners realized the mistake, they stopped issuing permits. When people with plans to build in the area complained, supervisors allowed 268 to proceed if they could prove their projects were in the works before the moratorium.

To accommodate the additional houses, officials had to borrow on future allocations, which call for 94 houses to be built annually in the area through the year 2000. That used up the entire allocations for 1990 and 1991. County planners estimate that 68 permits will be issued in 1992, and 78 will be issued each of the three years after that.

Rick Peets of Oak View has been on the waiting list since October, 1989. He hopes to build a house on a lot adjoining his home. According to the projections, he would be issued a building permit in 1992.

“It’s been a definite hardship,” said Peets, a building contractor, who was depending on the income from the sale or rent of the proposed house. Because of the delay and the downturn in the economy, he has become a computer consultant.

“I believe in planned growth,” he said. “But it doesn’t seem fair when people have to eke out an existence and they are arbitrarily cut off.”

The Ojai Valley Clean Air Ordinance includes a large swath around Ojai, Meiners Oaks, Oak View and Casitas Springs. The city of Ojai allows 16 building permits a year, which are included in the total number allowed.