Michael Miller
The new Culver City Housing Authority has the unenviable, perhaps Herculean and unachievable, task of erasing Culver City’s shame: that while the city’s businesses and outside developers thrived and grew rich under the Redevelopment Agency, the very people who that agency was set up to help, the poor and the struggling middle class, were ignored.
Affordable housing in Culver City is a joke, a very sad joke. There are currently almost 2,000 people waiting for housing in the city, yet not a single affordable housing unit has been built in more than 10 years. It hasn’t been for lack of money, the Redevelopment agency has been sitting on more than $45 million, designated for affordable housing, all that time.
But wait, there’s more, as they say in the TV commercials. While the Redevelopment Agency bureaucrats and the City Council members, who also acted as the RDA board, were sitting on their collective hands for more than a decade, those who were fortunate enough to receive affordable housing vouchers were given just 90 days to find their way out of the mire and into a home. Then, puff! The vouchers expired.
So it was OK for the city to dawdle over building sufficient units, but the unfortunates were given just 90 days to find these non-existent dwellings. Shame on the RDA and shame on the Council.
Let us put this in perspective. Culver City is one of the most expensive rental areas in Los Angeles County, it is also one where rental units are most scarce – in fact, according to the 2008-2014 Culver City Housing Element, the rental vacancy rate is just 2.1%.
So we lose a Redevelopment Agency and we gain a Housing Authority. How did that happen, in particular how did it happen with a minimum of discussion and a large rubber stamp wielded by the Culver City Council?
No real intrigue there; it was already written into law. On April 29 last year the California Supreme Court upheld Assembly Bill 26, freezing redevelopment activity and dissolving community redevelopment agencies throughout the state. At the same time, the court struck down Assembly Bill 27, which would have allowed cities to continue to operate redevelopment agencies.
AB 26 was the brainchild of California Governor Jerry Brown, who said RDA’s were a boondoggle and vowed to turn over the money the state had been paying them to education and law enforcement. Oddly enough, Governor Moonbeam said in January of this year, less than a month before the RDA’s were forced to shut up shop, that he was cutting the state’s education budget by $5 billion. Go figure.
But back to the Housing Authority. California Health and Safety Code requires that every county and city has a dormant public body identified as a housing authority. Counties and cities may declare that there is a need for Housing Authority to function to ensure safe and sanitary housing for persons of low income.
But the city must justify awakening this sleeping giant. And here comes the shame and the scorn heaped on Culver City, ironically, by the people who run it.
I quote now from the staff report to the Council prior to its January 9th adoption of the resolution activating the Housing Authority. This report was approved by the four heads of department of the relevant city agencies, some of whom may have been involved with the affordable housing debacle, and some of whom may not. They were Sol Blumenfeld of RDA, City Attorney Carol Schwab, Jeff Muir of Finance, and recently appointed City Manager John Nachbar.
What they approved was a condemnation of the appalling history of affordable housing in Culver City. “In order to establish a housing authority the city must find that either insanitary or unsafe dwellings exist within the city or that there is a shortage of sanitary and safe dwellings for persons of low income at affordable rents within the city. The unmet demand for affordable, safe and sanitary housing units is exemplified by the city’s experience with two programs administered by the city’s Housing Division.
“The Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher Program: There are currently 762 applicants actively waiting for rental assistance through Section 8. Some applicants have been on the list since 1998, a waiting period of 14 years. Once an applicant receives a Section 8 voucher they are given 90 days to locate a unit in Culver City. Due to a lack of available, affordable, decent, safe and sanitary units, many voucher holders exhaust the 90-day time period and are forced to seek units outside of Culver City. These forced relocations can result in the loss of jobs and the removal of children from their schools.”
The staff report goes on to the subject of the the Rental Assistance Program, which assists extremely low and up to moderate income households to subsidize their housing through RAP. “There are currently 1,062 applicants on the waiting list. Some applicants have been on this waiting list since 1990, a waiting period of twelve (12) years (sic)”
OK, so either they got the year wrong (most probable) or they got the math wrong. It matters not. Twelve years or 22 years is an unconscionable period of time to have to wait for an affordable housing unit when you are living on the edge of poverty.
By the way, the average search time given to RAP voucher holders ranges from 60 to 90 days before the voucher expires. Back to relocation, loss of jobs, loss of schools for kids.
The staff report goes on: “Based on the low vacancy rate the limited number of affordable rental units available, this shortage of affordable units makes it extremely difficult for Section 8 and RAP families to utilize their vouchers for rental assistance in the city."
An additional cause of the shortage of affordable, decent, safe and sanitary housing units is the lack of housing production. Culver City has not increased the supply of low and moderate income affordable housing units in more than 10 years. With the recent approval of the Irving, Tilden Terrace and Globe housing projects, Culver City will produce affordable housing units for the first time in over 10 years.
The now defunct RDA currently owes the city, or more appropriately the new Housing Administration, $45.4 million, which it should have spent on affordable housing. Of this, $10.5 million came from the state’s SERAF and ERAF (Supplemental Education Revenue Augmentation Fund and the Education Augmentation Revenue Fund) Don’t you just love Sacramentese! Anyway, this can sit in the coffers of a defunct agency until June, 2015, when it has to be handed over.
The remaining $34 million, representing housing funds that were deferred (i.e. never spent) between 1985 and 1996, can be repaid “in future years” according to the staff report. Blumenfeld clarified that at the January 9th Council meeting as 10 years. But again the question arises. Is this a shell game where valuable funds sit dormant while they could be spent on valuable affordable housing projects?
The question remains; how many affordable housing units can be built for $45.4 million? And how many could have been built at 1985-1996 prices. The city is obligated to build 71 more units by 2014. If the Irving Place figures are anything to go by, at today’s prices a single affordable housing unit costs $500,000 to build. Last year the city agreed to give the developers of 4043 Irving Place $6 million to include 12 affordable living units in their 28 apartment complex, in the form of a $3.36 million loan over 30 years at 1.5 percent (try getting that on your mortgage!) with the remaining $2.44 million a “gift” in the form of a forgivable loan.
So with no money coming into the Housing Authority until 2015 (remember the SERAF/ERAF repayment) that $45.4 million does not come into play, and those much touted units at Irving, Tilden and Globe are nothing more than raindrops in a very dry barrel.
Michael Miller is a Staff Writer for the Culver City Progress Blog and the Co-Founder of the Culver City Downtown Neighborhood Association.
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