Poor Families to Get Help Buying Homes

To help out the troubled neighborhoods of Capistrano Villas and Casa de Capistrano, the city unveiled a plan Tuesday night to help low-income families buy affordable homes there.

Under the proposal, the city’s redevelopment agency would spend $2 million over the next three years to buy as many as 50 vacant homes that have been in foreclosure and are now owned by the Federal Housing Administration.

The city, with help from a nonprofit housing corporation, would rehabilitate the homes, lease them to qualified low-income tenants for as long as 18 months, educate them in the responsibilities of home ownership, then sell the units to the tenants.

“We need this,” said Gillian Cannon, president of the Capistrano Villas II homeowners association, adding that her neighborhood has seen an increase in transients, drug use and other symptoms of blight. “We’re drowning out there. We’re at the point where it’s going to be sink or swim.”

Officials expressed hope that the program would revitalize the neighborhoods, in which about 60% of the residents are renters. Because rents are high, officials said, many of the communities’ two- and three-bedroom units are overcrowded.

“Right now, the rents are more than people can afford,” said Jennifer Murray, assistant to the city manager. “This program will help get a nuclear family into a unit without having other people double or triple up to help pay the rent.”

Pauline Leonard of the Mary Erickson Foundation, a nonprofit affordable housing group, expressed reservations to the council about the proposal, however.

“Low-income renters cannot become buyers in that short a time,” Leonard said. “We need to go back to the drawing board with input from residents.”

Council members said they will continue to fine-tune the proposal and reconsider it at their Sept. 17 meeting.