Malibu's Corrupted Housing Element

Malibu’s voracious real estate cabal is at it again, surreptitiously corrupting the city’s Housing Element to open a City Hall back door to unwanted development.

Among the proposed precedent setting abuses, most egregious is allowing large, profit gouging, residential care facilities in residential areas with a stroke of a bureaucrat’s pen.

So much for the transparency and accountability mouthed by the unlearned City Council majority. Forget the city’s noble Vision and Mission statements to preserve the environment and charm of Malibu as an iconic seacoast village.

As if the put-upon Malibu population needed yet another reason to defeat Grisanti in the upcoming election and elect the trio of embattled incumbents Silverstein and Uhring and the savvy Haylynn Conrad.

Vote as if the value of your home and the Malibu you love is threatened, because it is, no matter how many lawn signs Grisanti plants. His Council tenure has been an embarrassment.

Under the guise of complying with a State mandate to magnanimously build 47 affordable units, presumably for the local work force, teachers and seniors, the proposed amendments actually reduce that number to a fraction, “to make projects financially feasible,” and leaves the allocation up to the developer.

In effect, the city is yielding the prerogatives of design, building and operating the project to a developer, and that includes how it will be offered and to whom, from Malibu or wherever, whether a rental or sale.

Given a sympathetic City Hall and a politically conservative City Council, there is also the possibility the project in time could become market rate, luxury, and quite profitable for all involved in what could be labeled a real estate ruse.

Digging the knife deeper into Malibu’s enervated governance and fragile environment is the proposal to increase the allowable housing heights to “accommodate the density of 27 units per acre,” to be sure for affordable housing projects, but no less precedent setting.

Identified as the site of this gifting is 28517 PCH, a six acre vacant parcel between Paradise Cove and Pt. Dume, listed for several years for $15 million. Not identified is the owner, the development team and whomever else has elbowed their way to the city’s trough.

And who determined that exact urban density presumably needed to make the project feasible: the developer, a local realtor? It should be noted that there have been affordable projects, albeit non-profits, designed at much lower densities consistent with community character.

Who also slipped into the proposed amendments the free, pricey pass to residential rehabs to locate wherever? With their astronomical fees of five and six figures a month they certainly cannot be counted as affordable housing, nor necessarily good neighbors.

How could something so bald and flawed come out of City Hall? Might someone be trying to sabotage the city’s settlement with the State, while padding its reputation as a recalcitrant, reactionary municipality?

For more on this fiasco, mark your calendars for the public meeting next Monday night, the 19th, at City Hall.