Another Disaster in the Making

How come our electeds don’t seem to be able to grasp simple concepts; why have they no resistance to the bureaucratic sales pitch; why must they obscure their own ignorance in a cloud of asinine nonsense or outright lies?

If it was hard we couldn't do it!
If it was hard we couldn't do it!

Last Tuesday night the Fullerton City Council/Redevelopment Agency approved the idiotic Richman housing project, a staff-concocted, no-bid, pet project that proposes to subsidize ownership of condos. The vote was 3-1, Sharon Quirk-Silva, dissenting. Shawn Nelson took a powder.

Why is this project idiotic? First we believe that the ownership of a house is something that should be available equally, and not doled out by the government to its own selected recipients.

Second, the units in this project will have to be perpetually restricted to people whose income levels qualify. Perfect: perpetual housing bureaucracy! The necessary deed restrictions are a pretty significant encumbrance and will just add to the financial shakiness of the whole enchilada. But without these restrictions the original buyers would be in line for a massive windfall courtesy of all of us, when they sell.

A third point, as was admirably developed by Sharon Quirk-Silva, the proposed occupancy restrictions would very likely  disqualify people who need housing the most. Which leads to the fourth point. These units will not count against Fullerton’s most neglected RHNA category – low and very low income. Which leads to:

Five. Dick Jones claimed that approving  the Richman project is required to satisfy some legal mandate – it is THE LAW. That’s just a tin-plated, bald-faced lie. The SCAG RHNA allocations are goals, not a legal mandate. Cities are required by the State HCD to provide evidence of programs used to achieve those goals – not specific projects. And, in any case hypocritically, this project does not address the most urgent RHNA category of all which means that for folks who profess to really like this sort of thing, an opportunity has been lost.

Finally, FFFF has tried to promote better, more sustainable design in government-subsidized projects. And this project just promises more of the same old architectural crap we’ve been getting all along.

And now that we contemplate this fiasco, we feel the need for a last minute adendum to the Fringie Worst Vote category.

9 Replies to “Another Disaster in the Making”

  1. poorly designed government subsidized housing developments for lower income/working poor are called the projects. Fullerton’s city council should cruise L.A.’s Nickerson Gardens to see the future it has brought to Fullerton.

  2. Pam Kellers an impostor, she’s in over her head (as is Bankhead & Jones). Admin, you-tube her latest “Rich”man act, quack, quack,…….

  3. L. T., I did not miss the point of this post. Municipal governments should not be allowed to funnel tax payer’s money away from the city’s needed infrastructure to subsidize housing and thus unfairly compete with the private sector’s ability to earn a living through rentals or construction of houses/condos. Our economic depression has caused record foreclosures and high vacancy rates in apartments due to people losing their jobs and leaving Fullerton to find jobs elsewhere. Due to this fact, rent has dramatically dropped and is cheaper than paying a monthly mortgage.
    It doesn’t make sense to construct condos next to empty houses and apartments. If my first argument doesn’t persuade the readers of this post, then just use a green argument. why further pollute our town with toxic construction materials when we have existing houses/apts that may be used to house lower income persons.

  4. Van, the logic of “affordable housing” only makes sense in the context of Redevelopment – another crooked government make-work program.

    A long time ago the liberals came to see that Redevelopment by it’s very nature would displace people – lots of them, and most of them poor. That’s why the Legislature imposed the 20% set-aside for affordable housing. So now when you have one, you must have the other in an ever-upward reaching spiral. And believe me, there really is no upward limit. Nobody has ever forcast the implications several decades from now. This is particualrly problematic when , as in the case of the expansion, the areas are virtually all commercial or industrial. But the 20% must be spent even as it accumulates.

    And this is where Dr. HeeHaw get his “it’s the law” BS. By making it look like an individual project “must” be approved, he removes (in his pea-sized brain) any responsibility for the thing. See? Easy? Let’s move on now.

    By the Liberal Logic of Housing subsidy it is fundamentally cowardly and dishonest to avoid the very need recognized by your own “experts;” thus the hypocrisy of the Richman deal. It’s nothing but a blatant pet project for Zur Schmiede and Linda Morad, et al, to play around with, in perpetuity.

    So what’s the remedy? SHUT DOWN THE REDEVELOPMENT PROJECT ALTOGETHER!! No Redevelopment, no housing set aside, no bureaucratic make-work, no more crappy Allen Hotels, no more Ajit Mitaiwalas, no more subsidies to wealthy developers because they met ridiculously high “moderate income” levels; no more handovers of immensely valuable air rights/ground value to people like “The Morgan Group;” no more city staff/council real estate development speculation without a nickle’s worth of risk.

  5. Hey everyone else who doesn’t like this project:

    Next time show up at the council meeting to speak your mind and maybe we can stop it.

  6. Simple :Why not use housing vouchers to satisfy the 20% set aside?

    BECAUSE THEN WE DON’T GET TO PLAY “DEVELOPER” WITH OTHER PEOPLES’ MONEY!!!!!

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