LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Serra Housing Project a Mistake

Editor's Note: Larry Culbertson is taking issue with the San Clemente City Council's recent approval of a development agreement with National Community Rennaissance to build 19 affordable housing units on Avenida Serra. Rent would be offered at $998 per month for families of up to three people who make up to $49,860 per year.

Back in 1998 a plan was hatched to buy four lots at 107-115 Avenida Serra to build affordable housing. $400,000 of Redevelopment Agency money was used to buy that property. In 2009, our City Council, endorsed a concept that would allow a three story 19 unit building with 21 parking spaces. Existing zoning would only allow eight units and each would need two parking spaces. So code was amended to allow the high density project.

Many concerns have been raised about this project. It is far too dense for that neighborhood. Its size and massing will dwarf the five historic structures nearby, two directly across the street from the site. Its limited parking will make the scarce parking in the neighborhood even worse. Since it is adjacent to a small existing public parking lot on Avenida Cabrillo, the site would be far more useful as an extension of that lot. Existing and future businesses on Avenida Del Mar and North El Camino Real desperately need more parking. Our city staff has told me not to worry about any of those concerns.

On June 12, our City entered into a Development Agreement with National Community Renaissance (National CORE) to move forward with the project. $7,291,259 is being made available to National CORE. Presumably that is the amount they will spend to build those 19 units. That works out to $383,750 per unit. There are more affordable ways to provide affordable housing.

San Clemente has generated a war chest of over $6 Million for affordable housing. This was accomplished by allowing developers to pay a fee for not having to include affordable housing in their projects. An allowable use of that money is for acquisition and rehabilitation of blighted apartments by non-profit agencies. In 2010 San Clemente helped Mary Erickson Community Housing buy four units in the Vista Pacifica condominium development for under $230,000 each. That was a good use of available housing funds. There are other examples of San Clemente partnering with non profit housing groups to buy and rehab existing housing. Why build new housing when existing housing is available at a lower price?

The plan is to rent those 19 one bedroom units for $1000 per month to a maximum of 3 people per unit. That is only about $300 per month less than prevailing market rate. It hardly seems wise to spend $7.3 million dollars to save 19 tenants $300 per month. But it looks like that is what is going to happen. If we just handed each of those 19 tenants a check for $300 toward their rent on market rate housing it would only cost $68,400 per year. We could do that for over 106 years for the $7.3 Million we are about to spend.