It was another marathon city council meeting. Adjournment was not until nearly 1 a.m. That tends to happen whenever affordable housing is on the agenda as was the case last night.
The city will enter an exclusive negotiating agreement with Jamboree Housing Corporation to build a project at the old COURIER site. The city wants 75 units of mix senior and family housing at the 3-acre site.
There were over 20 speakers who attended to address the council, and plenty of NIMBYs (not in my back yard) among them. One speaker even said, "Your projects are great perhaps, but not in my back yard."
But there was a stark difference between the NIMBYs at last night's meeting and those opposing the project on Base Line Road. Residents on Green Street, College Avenue and the surrounding neighborhood for the most part raised legitimate concerns about parking, traffic and density that the project will bring to their neighborhood.
Many of the same people said they support affordable housing and want to successfully integrate the project there.
There were no statements like "those (poor) people" will bring in crime and destroy the value of our properties. That was a common argument among the Base Line area NIMBYs before the USC freeway pollution study came out.
The healthier attitude among the new neighbors towards affordable housing bodes well for the project's future success. There are still some serious concerns to be ironed out and hopefully the city will do all it can to address them.
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This is a pretty unfair commentary for several reasons. First off, the two projects do not compare. Notably, the Baseline Road project was an attempt to shoe-horn 45-low and extremely-low income families into a small space. Whereas the only "extremely-low" income component for this project is restricted to seniors (how convenient).
ReplyDeleteSecondly, I was at many of those meetings and there were consistent, concise arguments that, had the Council listened, would have saved the City several hundred-thousand dollars. These arguments included traffic, parking, air-pollution, and density issues. In fact, if you remember correctly, the project was scaled back because of the density issues raised.
Finally, it's WAY too early in this project to formulate an "opinion". What until it gets into the meat-and-potatoes and see how their attitudes are.