BUILDING RESENTMENT- The question is: Who should pay for affordable housing? Members of the Agoura Hills City Council practically held their noses as they voted June 11 in favor of a new ordinance that gave special concessions to developers who earmark portions of their projects for affordable and senior housing.

If local civic leaders are against dense, lower cost housing because of the adverse effect it might have on existing, upscale communities, why are they casting their votes in favor?

State law takes precedence over local zoning requirements, said Agoura Hills planner Allison Cook in a recent report to the City Council and, according to the law, cities throughout the region must encourage developers to build lower income homes even if the municipalities already have established affordable housing programs of their own.

In the Conejo Valley/ Moorpark/Simi Valley areas, city officials are bracing themselves for the inevitable: a requirement that they allow housing developments with densities between 20 and 30 percent above what would normally be permitted under local zoning laws.

Despite the recent freefall in housing prices, affordable homes for low- and moderate-income wage earners are still in short supply. The question is whether the state should guide the growth in production- affordable housing has always been a matter of public policy- or whether local municipalities be allowed to create the programs that work best for them.

City officials prefer to implement their own incentive programs for homebuyers rather than give costly concessions to developers required by state law.

Trading favors

"Public subsidy is often required to fill the gap on affordable units," wrote state Sen. Dennis Hollingsworth of Murrieta, author of Senate Bill 1818, California's affordable housing density bonus law.

"(The law) allows public subsidies to be reduced or even eliminated by allowing a developer to include more total units in a project than would otherwise be allowed by the zoning in order to spread the cost of the affordable units over the project as a whole," Hollingsworth said.

Permission to build more apartments, homes and condominiums on a particular site isn't the only concession cities must make to encourage developers to build affordable units.

Other inducements are being offered.

Concessions might include a reduction in the setback, the distance that separates a home from the curb. Developers might also be allowed to build on smaller lot sizes and operate under less restrictive architectural guidelines.

If a developer agrees to construct a housing project that includes a childcare facility, he would be entitled to an additional density bonus that's an amount of square feet of residential space equal to or greater than the amount of square footage in the childcare facility. But if a city already has an adequate childcare facility to meet the needs of lowto moderate-income families, the extra bonus can be sidestepped.

If a developer targets 15 percent of a project for verylowincome families- a four-person household with annual income of $35,000- then the builder would be entitled to three concessions from the city.

Other formulas also apply.

A family of four with annual earnings of $68,000 is considered a moderate-income family. Although home prices are well below their 2005 peak, a family still needs to earn between $75,000 and $100,000 to afford a condominium or home in Agoura Hills. The average cost to rent an apartment in the area is about $1,800, which requires an annual income of about $73,000.

Programs in place

Barry Hogan, deputy city manager for the city of Moorpark, doesn't seem too worried about the state mandate. He said the city's density bonuses for developers have been sufficient.

"We have also provided some reduction in parking, but none lower than 2.13 parking spaces per dwelling unit," Hogan said.

"The bigger deal is parking," said Rob Bruce, Simi Valley's housing deputy.

"SB 1818 allows a severe reduction of parking and allows parking to be tandem instead of side to side," he said.

Bruce said tandem (end to end) parking never quite works as intended, and front spaces generally wind up being used for storage.

Simi Valley will give qualified homebuyers in the low- to moderate-income range $100,000 in an equity sharing deal.

Simi Valley's City Council will vote on an affordable housing ordinance later this year, but Simi's law, like other municipal housing laws in the area, must conform to what's required by the state.

Other cities are active as well.

According to City Manager Greg Ramirez, Agoura Hills maintains a first-time home buyer assistance program and also has funds set aside to help developers close the gap between their cost of construction and the cost of selling units designated as affordable.

Builders typically realize higher profits on more expensive homes.

Another program in Agoura Hills offers tax credits for developers of affordable housing and stipends for apartment building owners who keep rents lower.

Thousand Oaks offers an array of programs to help lower income families live in the city, including first-time home buyer and rental assistance programs and an offer to rehabilitate older homes if the owner falls within a certain income.

Little leeway

"What the state law says is that they are allowed to get an increase in the otherwise maximum density," said Bill Hatcher, a Thousand Oaks senior analyst. "The state law is pretty clear that there's not a lot of discretion left up to the city."

"I don't think we have a lot of choice," said Agoura Hills City Councilmember Dan Kuperberg. "The idea is good . . . . The state is just doing it in absolutely the wrong way."

Smaller cities have different needs than larger ones and shouldn't be subject to the same requirements for affordable housing, Kuperberg said.

"This kind of ordinance will just benefit the developer," he said.

City officials in Simi Valley echoed a similar concern about the state's affordable housing mandate.

"It's pretty onerous," Bruce said. "Literally almost every residential project has an affordable component in it. . . . It doesn't seem fair."