THE NO-CITY COUNCIL DOES IT AGAIN! SLUMS FOR THE MIDDLE OF CM, GOLD FOR SOUTH COAST METRO
At last night's no-City Council meeting, the no-Council voted to approve a General Plan Screening Request to change 10 acres of state land at the Fairview Developmental Center, with views of the Costa Mesa Country Club golf course, from Public and Institutional uses to High Density Residential uses. LINK
WHAT THIS MEANS
There will be a very dense 32 units per acre development of very low, low and medium income apartments right near the golf course, Harbor Blvd. and Fair Drive. That's 320 units.
At the meeting, Don Lamm, the City's Development Services Director, strongly requested approval from the no-Council because the City is mandated by the state to have more affordable housing and we must comply.
WHAT'S THE DEEPER STORY?
As we previously reported, earlier this year, the no-City Council let developers, who are going to build hundreds and hundreds of high end units in the South Coast Metro area, get away with not providing any affordable housing units in their developments in that area.
That puts pressure on finding locations for such units in the rest of the city.
In essence, the no-Council said that the developers in South Coast Metro should be able to do whatever they want on their property. After all, by gum, it is their property. If they don't want affordable housing there, then the no-Council wasn't going to make them put any in. In fact, the no-Council said the developers didn't have to help put any such affordable housing anyplace else in the city either.
The developers appeared happily shocked by the no-Council's decision. That's because the developers had already planned on either putting in such low income housing or contributing to a fund to build it elsewhere. The no-Council said they didn't have to do either.
What the no-Council did with their largess was to condemn the inner core of Costa Mesa to have more and more affordable housing built there while letting the outer rim around South Coast Metro become a new gold coast with no-low cost anything. That's good for South Coast Metro, but what about the rest of Costa Mesa that must now take up the slack and have the affordable units built in neighborhoods that already have too many?
That's the problem with those who can't see the big picture and who can't think straight. They think they can mouth noble sounding individual property rights platitudes and that the piper won't have to be paid.
It doesn't work that way, folks. The piper will be paid. The state does require us to have a certain number of affordable housing units. We can't avoid it.
When you concentrate too many affordable housing units in one area, they eventually negatively impact the surrounding neighborhoods. A better plan is to spread them out around the city. When you do that, such units--because they are sprinkled in the midst of more expensive homes--often rise to reflect the nature of the majority of the homes in the area.
The developers in South Coast Metro should have at least been held to their fair share of affordable housing units.
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EASTSIDERS UP IN ARMS
Meanwhile, the folks on the Eastside are energized and organizing. They're really mad about all the traffic they see in their neighborhoods every day and they're mad about the 55 mess. They're starting to regularly show up at no-Council meetings and they're speaking out.
The CM PRESS hasn't seen such vigor since the Westsiders (with a little help from some in the north part of the city) began organizing back in 2000.
As you probably know, the Westside Improvers were so fired up that they were instrumental in electing (and then un-electing ) Chris Steel. Then, they helped elect Alan Mansoor, Eric Bever and Wendy Leece.
However, now that they have Mansoor, Bever and Leece on the dais, many of these Improvers are saying that these three aren't doing much to improve the Westside or the city and have now become part of the problem instead of being part of the solution.
In our talks with Improvers, we find many are discouraged with the lack of progress on the Westside and the don't rock the boat business as usual approach that seems to now pervade the no-Council.
This thinking from the traditional Improvers and the new activism of the Eastsiders may not bode well for some in the election this year unless things change.
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