What do you do with an apartment complex that historically has been a center for drug dealing, gang activity, assaults, rapes, and murders in Lompoc for the last four decades? That question was answered at a council meeting on Sept. 17.
Every city in the country has these types of apartments filled with low-income families; most of them are law-abiding citizens who just want a place to stay. But it is the 1 percent that make the place hard to live in. The young gangsters terrorize the honest people and run rampant through the area as if they own it; if a rival group shows up, bullets start flying. And in many cases innocent bystanders are the victims.
The apartment complex in question has 126 units that were built more than 50 years ago as market-rate rentals. Today this property houses mostly rent-subsidized, low-income residents. A nonprofit developer, recently incorporated as LIH Arbor Square LP from Los Angeles, wants to update the property using a $38 million low-interest loan.
Although this loan will not involve any city of Lompoc funds, the City Council was obligated to “conduct a public hearing pursuant to the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act (TEFRA) to provide the members of the community an opportunity to speak in favor of, or against, the use of tax-exempt bonds for the financing of the project.”
According to the staff report, the California Statewide Communities Development Authority (CSCDA) is a “joint powers authority sponsored by the League of California Cities and the California State Association of Counties (CSAC). CSCDA was created by the League and CSAC in 1988 to enable local government and eligible private entities access to low-cost, tax-exempt financing for projects that provide a tangible public benefit, contribute to social and economic growth, and improve the overall quality of life in local communities throughout California.”
For their effort, the recipient of these loans must pay back all the money; however, they are guaranteed 100 percent occupancy for 55 years. The occupants will pay rent, usually 30 percent of their income; however, the owner/operator receives market rate rents that include subsidies from taxpayers.
These projects are a significant burden on public safety services, but since they are a nonprofit entity, they pay no property taxes to support those services!
Lompoc has an abundance of low-income housing projects. In August 2018, city officials notified the California Tax Credit Allocation Committee that they had several concerns with a proposal to add just 40 low-cost units to the inventory in the city.
Some of these concerns were that the city currently had “76 percent of the total multi-family units compared to neighboring jurisdictions that are less than 7 percent,” and that “tax credit projects in the city have a history of high code enforcement cases and calls for public safety, in particular Arbor Square, which had 73 active code enforcement cases.”
There is little disagreement that low-income families, like every other income group, deserve a safe, dry, and warm place to live their lives peacefully. This developer plans to spend $300,000 per unit to upgrade this property; that will likely produce well-appointed apartments like those low-income units built over the last few years here in the city.
They will have all the bells and whistles that we associate with market-rate condo units. When you think of this project, consider this if you own a home: Can you afford to spend $300,000 to upgrade your digs? I don’t know of many people who can.
Another issue that comes to mind is that when we talk about a community’s housing needs, how about all those homeless people? Would this loan be better used to provide suitable housing and treatment centers for the homeless?
Somehow the politics of public housing have gotten their priorities all screwed up. There is a defined, almost an emergency need for homeless assistance, but all the body politic can do is talk about it. Yet we spend money on projects that simply renovate housing units that already exist.
This isn’t a “Lompoc problem”; as the city told the loan authority back in 2018, we’ve done more than our share with “76 percent of the total [low-income] multi-family units compared to neighboring jurisdictions that are less than 7 percent.”
But even though they documented the problem in 2018 and several citizens spoke out against the project during this hearing, this year they approved the issuance of bonds without a whimper. This for a project that will not add any new low-income housing and may even displace current residents who are just above the poverty level.
Ron Fink is a resident of Lompoc. Send your thoughts to [email protected].
