ON THE TOWN:High-rise decision lacks foresight

The shock and awe you may have witnessed last week was the sound of all five people on the Costa Mesa City Council agreeing on a major issue.

In this case, it was approval of a slew of high-rise condominiums in what is trying to be known as South Coast Metro. Call it what you want, it’s still Costa Mesa. That is unless you are the management of some buildings over by Main Street and Macarthur Boulevard that are technically in Santa Ana.

Those people tried several years ago to make South Coast Metro their ZIP Code city, but the post office wouldn’t budge. Call it what you want, it’s still Santa Ana over there.

It is ironic that some people who campaigned against a condominium complex over by Triangle Square — opposing it because of the traffic problems they said it would bring — have now gotten religion and approved an even greater development in an area that is already choking at certain times of the day.

Why is it OK at South Coast Metro and not by Triangle Square? One can only guess, but it would be hard to deny the long arm of the Segerstrom vision, in this case, to add more upscale housing options.

Upscale will be the only option in the new buildings because the goodwill generated by the unanimous vote was erased with the denial of the affordable housing rider on the developments.

The chief argument against the affordable housing component was that asking developers to contribute to the concept was wrong.

But by eliminating the option, the City Council may have dug a very deep and very wide hole for itself — and for everyone who lives in Newport Beach or Costa Mesa.

First, it is important to understand that “affordable” housing is not indigent housing. Affordable housing programs are designed to attract the key members of the labor force who support a city’s infrastructure. These people are by and large the law-abiding, upwardly mobile residents who make up our police force and fire department and who teach our kids in our schools.

Without a place nearby to live — one that they can call their own instead of renting — our ability to attract them to these important jobs is greatly diminished. And with the median home in Orange County now at around $600,000, their task is nearly impossible.

The math for rejecting the people we need is easy to do. According to the Automobile Club of Southern California, the national average for owning and operating a medium-sized sedan is 47.7 cents per mile. If I am a firefighter and want to own my own home and work in Newport-Mesa, I am forced to commute at least 30 miles, probably more, to find something affordable in a decent neighborhood.

Now take a salary of $50,000, and apply those commuting costs to a 60-mile round-trip commute. I ran these figures through the Auto Club’s online calculator, and it revealed that the commuting cost for that scenario is $9,444.60.

So for the prospective teacher, firefighter or police officer, they will see that they can buy their own home somewhere else, live close to work and save themselves a lot of grief. And if they did all that somewhere else with a job that paid them $9,444.60 less than a Newport-Mesa salary, they would never notice the difference in their lifestyle because their lower salary would go as far as the Newport-Mesa salary that included the difference in commuting costs.

Or make the salary $60,000 or $70,000, the concept is the same.

So whom do we end up recruiting? Yes, there will still be some people attracted to working in the area, but that luster will wear off soon enough. The rest of them could very well be people who are not qualified to work elsewhere. That is a risk to which the City Council has now exposed us.

The South Coast Metro area is a nice one to be in, with its cluster of shopping, restaurants and entertainment. Entertainment, that is, except for the loss of a wonderful theater on Sunflower that used to show old movies on Wednesday nights. The theater has closed.

So too has the door on affordable housing for some good people we need.