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Greenbelt Alliance In the News

October 20, 2002

Signs point to more high-density developments

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The state's demographic future – aging baby boomers, coupled with a rapidly growing immigrant population – appears to be on a collision course with home-building practices that still favor single-family homes in suburbia.

Demographers who spoke at the American Planning Association's statewide conference in San Diego this month noted that population trends in California point to a need for more high-density, compact development in urban areas.

For one thing, as baby boomers age and become empty-nesters, their housing preferences turn to town houses in the city, said Dowell Myers, a demographer with the University of Southern California.

Over the next two decades, he added, Latinos will account for 70 percent of the state's population growth, but "we're not building for that population."

Latinos, he said, tend to live in apartments, yet the complexes that are being built are designed for singles and couples with no children.

"There are 10 million households in California, and only 1 percent are living in new homes," Myers said. "So a small minority dictates what gets built."

"We're running out of green fields (large tracts of developable land), so we'll have to go back to in-fill. But it will be a real challenge, and the building industry is not set up to do that. There's going to be a real crunch."

Joseph Carreras of the Southern California Association of Governments, a regional planning agency, agreed. He, too, forecasts a growing demand for apartment construction. In recent years, though, the only apartments that have been built cater to the luxury market. "There's a mismatch between what's produced and what's needed," he said.

Meanwhile, the state's affordable-housing crisis deepens as cities and counties scamper to find scarce funds and new strategies to expand housing opportunities for low-and moderate-income households.

There are still a number of funding sources affordable housing developers can tap, like pools of state and federal tax credit money, pension funds, and property tax revenues from redevelopment agencies, pointed out Cathy Creswell of the state housing department.

And statewide, localities can look forward to sharing $2.1 billion in housing funds if a state bond issue – Proposition 46 – is approved by voters in November.

"When we don't have much money, we have to make the most of what we have," said Creswell, who spoke on a panel dealing with "Overcoming California's Critical Housing Shortage."

In the San Francisco Bay Area, where housing prices are the highest in the state, the Greenbelt Alliance, an environmental organization, issued a report card on how well the region is responding to the crisis. The report was issued in conjunction with the Non-Profit Housing Association of Northern California.

The group found that 72 percent of Bay Area jurisdictions are failing to take basic steps to create affordable housing, said Janet Stone of the alliance.

Stone said her group used the report card as leverage to push for more housing reforms. One strategy it urges cities to consider is inclusionary housing, a policy that requires developers to set aside a certain percentage of the homes they build for low-and moderate-income households. In the Bay Area, half of the 40 largest cities have inclusionary policies, and an additional 12 are proposing them, Stone reported.

The San Diego City Council recently endorsed an inclusionary ordinance that permits developers to pay a fee in lieu of building the units. The ordinance, though, has not yet been formally enacted.

Smart growth, the concept of building more compact development in urban areas close to public transportation, seemed to figure in many of the panel discussions attended by planners.

Of keen interest to many was the prospect of turning strip shopping center sites into mixed-use developments including housing, offices and retail.

But as Huntington Beach developer John Tillotson warned in one session, it can take many years to make such a project happen. "There is one heck of a lot of obstacles out there to overcome," he said.

Tillotson described the 11-year struggle to plan and build Plaza Almeria, a $27 million project in downtown Huntington Beach that includes 42 condominiums, 40,000 square feet of retail and offices and 267 parking spaces. The California Redevelopment Association awarded him its top prize this year for mixed-use development.

"We must make the investment today for a return tomorrow," Tillotson told the planners. "You in the cities have to do the same thing."

Copyright 2002 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.

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