Part two
Re “Gross Explains Why City Hall Failed to Meet State Housing Obligations”
Carol Gross, now retired from office for three years, was a member of the Redevelopment Agency during eight of the years that an obscure state office asserted last Sept. 30 that Culver City was among numerous communities failing to fulfill their obligations to build affordable housing.
In last week’s first installment, she said the main reason was that neighbors objected to nearly every residential project that was proposed.
Ms. Gross’s recollection was that Culver City, according to the state Housing Authority, was obligated to build 658 units of affordable housing. “In Culver City,” she said, “that is not reality.
“ But there was no penalty if you didn’t.
“Periodically, legislators, in their wisdom, raised the issue of penalizing communities that did not meet the mandated goals. But that never went through during my time in office.
“So we tried to do what we could.”
Does the failure to meet the state goal relate to the philosophy of your colleagues on the Redevelopment Agency?
“I could say yes and no, so let me tell it to you this way. If the philosophy was, ‘meet the goal at any cost,’ then you could say yes, that was not our philosophy.
“Meeting the goal at any cost would have meant saying ‘too bad what the neighbors think. Too bad what the community thinks. Let’s go bulldoze part of Downtown and build high-density housing.’
“If the philosophy of City Council members was, ‘Let’s see how we can move toward compliance while trying to find ways that can be accepted by the community, then you start looking at mixed-use projects.
“But I am not going to bulldoze Sunkist Park and build high-density housing.”
Ms. Gross’s point:
“There isn’t open land.
“So obviously, if you have to build hundreds of units, you have to do that where something exists now.
“Now we get to reality time, whether it is the Champion project on South Sepulveda several years ago, the mixed-use project proposed down around the light rail station. the Gonzalez project on Irving Place — and there were others.
“Some projects were listed on West Washington, too. There also was a little project at the corner of Culver and Duquesne.
“I am talking about mixed-use projects. They were situations where one out of every so-many units would be for subsidized, low-income housing.
“Even though they would be subsidized, low-income housing, they would be built and look like all of the other units.
“If you lived next door, you would not know your neighbor is low-income and being subsidized by the Redevelopment Agency Housing Fund.”
(To be continued)
