South City’s Municipal Services Building has long been identified as an ideal site for affordable housing but, after mounting pressure from a number of residents, the city is taking the first step toward potentially removing it from its state-mandated housing plan.
The building previously housed several city services and departments for decades, including parks and recreation activities, and its programs were transferred to the recently built Library and Parks and Recreation Center, which opened at the end of last year. The move has since angered many residents who have consistently shown up to council meetings since then, stating they want the site to reopen as another community center, not housing.
Cynthia Marcopulos said the new recreation center, which is larger than the MSB and located across the street, doesn’t have ample parking and isn’t well designed for connection.
“The [library and recreation center] is not an old-fashioned community center,” she said. “It divides us by floors and rooms, and we are asked to leave after a class is done. We want to hang out and socialize.”
But the issue feeds into a broader conundrum over how cities deal with resident pushback to increased development, especially given the state’s stricter requirements to build more housing. South City needs to plan for almost 4,000 more housing units between 2023-31, 35% of which must be for low-income households. While there are no current proposals to redevelop the MSB site, even the prospect of building a new, unknown structure can engender fear in the community, Mayor James Coleman said.
“People’s imaginations are running, and they are assuming the worst,” he said.
One of the demands from residents like Marcopulos is to remove the MSB from the housing element, the city’s blueprint that lays out where it could realistically place all of its state-assigned housing units, or Regional Housing Needs Allocation. The detailed document must be approved by the California Department of Housing and Community Development and typically takes at least a year to develop. It has been the target of more state oversight over the last several years as cities across California struggle with an affordable housing crisis. Thus, removing a potential housing site like the MSB — especially one that is a well-suited candidate for low-income housing, as it is city-owned property — is not a straightforward process and requires nine to 10 months of planning and ultimately HCD approval, Nell Selander, director of Economic and Community Development, said. Per HCD’s guidelines, the city would need to identify alternative sites that could house a similar number of units as the MSB property, and it would also need to be in higher-income neighborhoods to avoid “concentrating poverty,” she added.
“It’s a pretty lengthy process,” Selander said. “I don’t want to say it’s simple. It is staff work, and would take a bit of time, but it is a possible avenue.”
But perhaps most crucially, the housing element is a planning tool that outlines where development could go, not where it must go. Even if the city moves forward with removing it from the document — to which Councilmember Mark Nagales and Vice Mayor Eddie Flores said they were open — the site could still end up as housing. In part, that’s because the California Surplus Land Act stipulates that if city-owned property, like the MSB site, is leased or sold, affordable housing developers must be given priority, and elected officials could still decide to develop it as such, regardless of whether it’s in the housing element.
“We will tend to tie up staff on something that removes a fear that is in the public because it’s in the housing element, but at the same time, a future council could decide it’s going to be housing,” Councilmember Mark Addiego said.
Evelyn Stivers, executive director of Housing Leadership Council, said those advocating to keep the MSB are less concerned about the lack of services at the new recreation center and more concerned with potentially low-income housing that could “change the character of the neighborhood.”
“The false fear that city services are being eliminated is just not true … the new recreation center is objectively beautiful,” she said, adding that the city just spent hundreds of thousands of dollars identifying potential housing sites during the housing element process, which involved robust community input. Trying to remove the MSB from the housing element would be “expending a ton of public money and resources to satisfy unfounded fears that are just being passed around irresponsibly,” she said.
But during the Aug. 28 meeting, the council still directed staff to move ahead with identifying alternative housing sites in case it decides on removal. Despite the additional staff time, Coleman said the MSB’s exclusion in the housing element won’t guarantee its supporters’ preferred outcome either way.
“It would be a lot more symbolic than it would be impactful,” he said.
Marcopulos and her peers have identified about 39 city-owned properties that could replace the MSB on the housing element, such as the West Orange Library building, and the notion that the city must find alternative sites to begin with is indicative of the state’s overreach, against which the city should push back, she said.
During the meeting, Coleman reiterated that the city could face a similar predicament with the nearby residents if they are also opposed to a potential housing site near them.
“Before we do a swap, we have to also engage the neighbors. Otherwise they’ll be here in this room, just like all of you, opposing that land swap, and then we’re back in the same situation,” he said during the meeting.
The City Council also directed staff to reevaluate a feasibility study to understand the potential uses for the building as well.
(1) comment
Evelyn Stivers, Housing Leadership Council, accuses our city residents of irresponsibly passing around unfounded fears, and wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on developing the current plan. Where does she get her information? From city leadership who have pushed our city into unprecedented budget deficits that are projected to grow over the next years; and have pushed through so many capital projects and land use decisions without real dialogue with residents, voters. We residents can speak volumes on local government irresponsibility - fiscal, civic, you name it! SSF residents - vote, vote, vote.
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