Readers Respond -- How should city deal with affordable housing?

In regards to “Cut back affordable housing, Steel says” (March 23), I

am very concerned about how often “our property values” were mentioned as

opposed to how rarely human value was spoken of. Steel said that

nonprofit organizations have “a negative impact and have hurt our overall

quality of life.”

I think that Adrian would disagree. Adrian is an eighth-grader who

studies after school at the Shalimar Teen Center, a THINK Together

Learning Center and local nonprofit organization. He is bright, outgoing

and does well in school. Recently, he told me with pride in his voice,

that he would be the first person in his family to graduate from the

eighth grade. I think that his involvement with the teen center and his

work with volunteer tutors has had a positive impact in his life.

The two teens from the Shalimar Teen Center that were recently

accepted to Sage Hill High School have also benefited from the

opportunities found here at the teen center. People do not come to Costa

Mesa because charities are here. The charities came because the need was

here. Organizations like the Shalimar Learning Center are not negatively

impacting our communities. They are raising educated young people with

the skills to contribute to our community.

Just who is “our?” Our property values and our quality of life.

Shouldn’t that include all of the residents of Costa Mesa and not just

the ones who have money?

Steel said, “We’ve got to get serious about the people we’re letting

live here.”

Well, who let Steel live here? Maybe he’s right. Maybe “we” shouldn’t

let people like Steel live here.

People are free to live where they want. I was raised in Costa Mesa. I

went to college, got my degree, got some overseas experience and now have

a job that I love and work hard at. But I can’t afford to live here. Does

that mean I don’t have the right to affordable housing?

I think it’s important to live and work and worship and play in the

same community. I’m living with my parents and saving so I can have the

privilege of living in the community I love. I know people who want to

live in Costa Mesa because it’s got “flavor” -- mercados, arts, colleges,

Spanish, English, experiences from around the world to be shared with one

another, courage, persistence and hard work. We have much more to offer

the city than our property values.

CRISSY BROOKS

Costa Mesa

Editor’s Note: Crissy Brooks is the director of the Shalimar Learning

Center.

In terms of affordable housing, in the first place, it should be using

market standards.

Whatever the market will bear should determine the price of housing.

It shouldn’t have an artificial cap on it as Mayor Libby Cowan is trying

to do.

Now, at the March 16 City Council meeting, Cowan actually hinted to a

developer, who is trying to develop some homes on the El Camino Shopping

Center site, that he should make his homes priced for the “work force.”

That sounds suspiciously like telling the guy that he’s got to keep

his prices way down, not go to market prices on this thing. That’s really

not what we need in Costa Mesa. We need to let the free market reign on

this thing. Property has certain value and it’s what a willing buyer and

a willing seller are willing to agree to. That’s what should dictate the

prices in the city, not an artificial cap.

MARTIN MILLARD

Costa Mesa

If only I’d been told.

I am a white male, mid-30s, and I’m a registered Republican in the

state of California, although I tend to vote my conscience and not my

party. I’m a computer professional who lives in Costa Mesa, was recently

laid off from a dot-com bust at my company, and with a coming recession,

well, of course budgeting is on my mind and that of my wife’s.

Still, I am an honest man, not a criminal or layabout. I am a

responsible citizen and I enjoy living in this community. None of this

matters now, I guess. Since my wife and I enjoy “affordable” housing, at

least one councilman thinks we don’t belong here.

Steel says more expensive housing would improve the city by bringing

richer people into its borders, and in doing so, he insulted a large,

vaguely defined group of people known as -- what’s the word? -- oh yes,

his employers.

If Steel truly believes that wealthy people are a better class, and

people like me are “undesirable” because we need to be able to afford

housing, then he has every right to that belief, no matter how abhorrent

and self-serving it might seem to be. So let’s assume for the moment that

the councilman’s statements were merely aimed at trying to bulk up the

city’s financial stature.

Of course, but then he makes things worse.

“I’m not in favor of subsidized housing or affordable housing. We’ve

got to get serious about the people we’re letting live here.”

Would someone please remind the councilman that he lives and works for

a public government. The very attitude that allows a statement such as

“the people we’re letting live here” is so offensive and elitist that it

makes me question why he doesn’t move further south in the county where

people who think like Steel are smart enough to keep “the help” at bay by

doing away with that most horrible of curses: affordable housing.

Cheers to Mayor Libby Cowan for her intelligent rebuttal, by the way,

and her defense of city charities, as well.

Steel, please learn from history. Strength lies not only in fiscal

responsibility but in diversity, compassion and yes, common sense, not in

exclusionary and dictatorial attitudes. I can only hope you someday know

what it feels like to be told you’re not wanted, say, when you’re up for

reelection.

MICHAEL CARNEY

Costa Mesa

The Pilot recently ran an editorial suggesting that Newport Beach

needs to provide low-cost housing for senior citizens.

Given the fact that Bethel Towers (our senior housing) in Costa Mesa

has a waiting list of 700 elderly people who need low-cost housing, Costa

Mesa should probably look into more senior housing as well. Addressing

the needs of our seniors would certainly meet any state or

federally-mandated low cost housing requirements.

Mayor Libby Cowan suggests there is a need for pride of ownership

housing in the $250,000 range. The Westside Improvement Assn. agrees and

has suggested raising the slum areas of town and building condominiums

and single-family homes in place of the obsolete apartments currently

found there. Condos on the Westside currently sell between $175,000 and

more than $300,000, and building more will fill the affordable housing

need Cowan speaks of.

We also need to build more “move up” single family homes to give

current condo owners a place to move in Costa Mesa while freeing up their

condos for entry-level buyers. While it would be nice to start out in a

single family home, Costa Mesa’s proximity to the ocean drives the real

estate market and eliminates the possibility of building $250,000 single

family homes. To do so on our valuable property would be foolish. We need

to apply the principle of “Highest And Best Use” in every project to

ensure that we do not sell ourselves short. Building a new and wonderful

city depends on it.

ERIC BEVER

Costa Mesa

Our President says: Leave the arsenic in the water, cut more roads in

the national forests for logging, leave the American Bar Association’s

opinions out of the appointment process for judges, build oil wells in

the most pristine parts of Alaska, to heck with repetitive workplace

injuries, let the corporate agriculture conglomerates pour their

pesticides by the ton and don’t hold power companies responsible for the

ozone depletion or their part in global warming.

Who is this man working for? Only the very rich, certainly not the

struggling, working people and their children.

Now our own Councilman Chris Steel says Costa Mesa has too many

nonprofits and helps too many people and we shouldn’t subsidize the poor

or build affordable housing because it lowers the property values.

Property values over human values? Well go ahead and lower my property

value. I’m not selling so it doesn’t bother me. Bush and Steel will be

gone and those of us who are staying for the long haul will be left to

clean up their mess, again. They should both be ashamed, very ashamed.

There was a farmer who consistently won the best-in-show for his prize

corn and he always shared his best seed with his neighbors. When asked

why, he said, “It’s in my own best interest. The wind picks up the pollen

and carries it from field to field. So if my neighbors grow inferior

corn, the cross-pollination brings down the quality of my own corn. That

is why I am concerned that they plant only the best.”

Uplifting each other, healing the separation in our community,

listening, mediating disputes, exercising compassion and understanding

for those who temporarily have less and directing government toward

creating a more enlightened society is the job of both Steel and Bush.

Get with the program or sell now while your property still has any value,

because your ways of thinking will definitely sell all of us down the

drain.

DAN MILLSTEIN

Costa Mesa

If “affordable housing” is referring to multifamily units, such as

apartment buildings, nothing will help unless some criteria is sent on

occupancy. There are a lot of affordable housing apartments in the city,

however the property owners don’t do a very good job in screening

tenants. There are a lot of property owners that don’t even know the

number of people living in their apartments. It sometimes takes three or

four families living in one apartment to be able to come up with the rent

in even the affordable housing units. As long as the property owners get

their rent, they don’t care how many people it takes living in the unit

to accomplish that end.

Unfortunately, most of the affordable housing owner-occupied homes

that are available in Costa Mesa are in neighborhoods where teachers and

nurses etc., choose not to live because of the crime rate and the

problems those neighborhoods have. For the amount of money they would

have to pay for a home in a less than desirable neighborhood in Costa

Mesa, they can buy a home in Huntington Beach or Fountain Valley in a far

more desirable neighborhood. That is what I found when I was looking for

a house.

I think that Mayor Libby Cowan and Councilwoman Linda Dixon need to

spend more time on the Westside, especially after dark, to see what is

really happening in Costa Mesa. Then they would get the feel of what the

neighborhoods there are really like. Then they need to ask themselves if

they would want to live in those neighborhoods.

SUSAN SPIEGELMAN

Fountain Valley