Needed: Partnership on Low-Cost Homes : * Government and Business Still Can Do Their Part

A recent Times article reported that “the urbanization of Orange County is so far advanced that some building industry and government officials privately agree that the opportunity to create a significant new supply of affordable housing most likely has passed.” If what the experts are saying behind the scenes is true, some perplexing questions are raised.

Where were those building industry and government officials when the opportunity for constructing lower-cost housing did exist? Why did they let the chance pass the community by? And what can be done now to help ease the shortage that their neglect has compounded?

The obvious answer to opportunity lost is that developers in the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s were busy building projects that provided the greatest financial return. Unfortunately, that didn’t include much lower-cost housing. And the Board of Supervisors, listening more to the developers than to affordable-housing advocates, dismantled requirements enacted in 1979 that mandated the construction of a percentage of lower-cost housing in each residential development.

In 1983 the board, at the urging of the building industry, phased that policy out, ostensibly because lower-cost housing was being built voluntarily. In light of today’s shortages, however, that premise doesn’t seem to hold up.

Not that building lower-cost housing is that easy to do. The economic realities of Orange County’s high land costs always have made it more difficult here to build affordable housing. And local government fees add greatly to the costs, moving homes even more out of reach.

That problem was emphasized again in the recent federal Housing and Urban Development Department’s “Kemp Report” that cited obstacles to building affordable housing. (A recent study reported that government permit fees in Orange County can add about $30,000 to the cost of a home.)

The Orange County Building Industry Assn. and Christine Diemer, its executive director and the former director of the California Department of Housing and Community Development, want to do something about that and the shortage of affordable housing. Last month, they sponsored a panel discussion on the national report.

Diemer disclosed at the session that Supervisor Roger R. Stanton wants to form a coalition to spur a city-county effort to streamline local government’s land-use system and draft regional rules that might reduce housing costs. He’s the same supervisor, by the way, who in 1983 was a leading proponent of the phasing out of the county’s mandatory affordable housing policy, an action that helped create today’s predicament.

We support the renewed effort from county officials, late as it is, to return local government to an active role. And the private sector should meet the need. It must do so with innovative methods and be free of over-regulation.

But for too long, builders and government have been too slow to respond to the shortage of affordable housing. That has led to today’s serious employment-housing imbalance that forces too many workers to live elsewhere. They jam freeways and erode air quality when commuting to Orange County. It also means the loss of businesses.

Orange County can’t keep farming out its housing problem. People working and living here ought to be able to find homes they can afford. The building industry and governmental officials must band together to seek whatever opportunities that still remain for that housing.