24-Home Plan a Step in Right Direction : Fountain Valley Was Right to Resist Pressure, Approve Affordable Housing Project

The proposed construction of a relatively small affordable housing project that will make it possible for 24 working families to purchase townhouses with reasonable down payments and monthly mortgage payments within their reach should not be controversial. Rather, it should be routine in Orange County.

Unfortunately, it isn’t, because the myth that affordable housing means higher crime rates and lowered property values for everyone dies hard. And residents who might even recognize the urgent need for such housing, and would otherwise support it, too often have fallen prey to the “pull-up-the-gangplank” syndrome, and stormed City Hall in protest when such housing is proposed for their neighborhood.

That happened again earlier this month in Fountain Valley where 224 people wrote letters and about 100 showed up at a council session to protest the proposed 24-home project. But the City Council, showing needed foresight and backbone, resisted the pressures and by a 4-1 vote did the right thing--for the neighborhood and entire community--by approving construction.

Providing that affordable housing mix, as Mayor Laurann Cook noted, is mandated by law. It is the city’s responsibility to take an active role in seeing that those homes are built. But for too many years, too many cities and too many public officials, have been shirking that obligation and giving in to political pressures and protests. The result is they haven’t been spending the dollars they should on affordable housing, despite the growing, critical need for it.

This was documented in a recent state report on redevelopment agencies (including 20 in Orange County) which must set aside 20% of their locally generated tax receipts for affordable housing projects. State housing officials found about $350 million statewide sitting unused. Orange County’s poor performance in providing affordable housing also showed up in two other recent reports that found eight in 10 poor families spending at least half their income for housing. It ranked the county the second-worst area in the nation for providing affordable housing, generally defined as housing within reach of those making less than 80% of the county’s median income.

It has been estimated that there are 300,000 such people in Orange County. Building 24 affordable homes in Fountain Valley may be a very small step, but it is a step in the right direction--one that far too few cities, to their shame, have had the political courage to take.