City Housing Policy Shift May Put Poor in the Cold

The resounding rebuff by the mayor and City Council last week of a proposal to make garage apartments safer, and in some cases legal, comes at a time when Los Angeles is on the brink of a major shift in housing policy.

The change is likely to be hastened by the departure of housing chief Gary Squier, an appointee of former Mayor Tom Bradley whose activist style riled a number of aides to Mayor Richard Riordan, and could leave the city reliant on private-sector solutions to what some describe as one of the worst housing crunches in the nation.

Riordan, who does not have a housing deputy among his aides and does not count housing as a priority, is expected to chart a course in Squier’s absence that would mix housing with attracting new business to the city’s poorest neighborhoods.

“From the mayor’s perspective, housing development would just be one tool among many to help revitalize a neighborhood,” said Chris O’Donnell, Riordan’s budget director and the architect of a plan to combine some funds for housing, redevelopment and public works projects into one pool. “So that’s going to be the shift.”

There even has been talk of combining the Housing Department with the struggling Community Redevelopment Agency, a move that could leave the city without a designated advocate specifically for housing.

Indeed, advocates for the poor say Riordan’s approach would leave the city rudderless when it comes to housing. Such a void would be all the more pronounced in the coming months, when several looming housing crises are expected to come home to roost.

“There’s no real coherent policy,” said Jan Breidenbach, executive director of the Southern California Assn. of Non-Profit Housing. “There’s no solid leadership on it. There’s no champion on the City Council and the leadership doesn’t come out of the mayor’s office.”

Over the next year, the city will have to deal with the impact of welfare reform on the ability of poor families to pay rent as well as the anticipated expiration of contracts with landlords to provide low-cost housing under the federal Section 8 program.

Some neighborhoods, according to Squier, City Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg and others, are deteriorating so fast that if the city doesn’t step in soon, they will be lost as places to live and work.

And throughout the city, according to figures gathered by the Housing Department in 1994, 500,000 households either pay too much for housing or live in substandard and overcrowded conditions.

Still, even the mayor’s top deputies agree that there is little consensus on how to move forward.

“Housing policy?” quipped one powerful aide. “Do we have one?”

Another aide, Riordan deputy Kelly Martin, said the mayor views housing as important but not a top priority.

“It doesn’t mean he doesn’t think there’s a tremendous need,” Martin said. “He does. But there are other tremendous needs. We do a lot of juggling in this office. We also pave streets.”

The mayor has long considered merging the Housing Department with the Community Redevelopment Agency, and he has reduced the housing agency’s budget for two years running. The agency’s budget has declined from $68.2 million two years ago to $57.1 million for the current fiscal year. Meanwhile, the CRA’s outlays for housing have fallen from $40 million three years ago to about $5 million currently.

Martin said that the mayor’s office would be taking a look at its housing policy as part of the search for a replacement for Squier, whose resignation last month becomes effective July 1.

“At this point, I don’t even think we’ve decided what philosophy we want,” Martin said.

Whoever is hired, however, is not likely to be the aggressive advocate Squier has been.

The former activist, plucked from the ranks of community organizers by Bradley, resigned shortly after an audit criticized his department for its management of some earthquake recovery funds. During his tenure, he pushed hard for new housing as well as rehabilitation of deteriorating stock.

“I yelled too loud during the budget process. I’m too difficult during the budget time,” said Squier, who resisted Riordan’s plan to consolidate funds traditionally earmarked for housing with money from other departments. “That’s the time that the relationship with the mayor’s staff and the various agencies was most contentious.”

He was so zealous in enforcing laws against slum conditions that the Apartment Assn. of Greater Los Angeles took to lampooning him in its newsletter. In one issue, three out of four articles were about Squier--none flattering.

“He was the only person in the city who had a perspective on the housing situation in the city as a whole,” said Gary Blasi, a UCLA law professor who specializes in housing issues and serves on a Blue Ribbon Committee on Slum Housing.

Irma Vargas, president of the apartment association, said she hopes the rejection last week of recommendations by the Garage Housing Task Force--chaired by Squier--signaled that the housing chief’s influence was already on the wane.

Most sources, including Squier, see the rejection of the garage recommendations less as a referendum on Squier than as an acknowledgment that it would be extremely difficult politically to legalize garage apartments. At a hearing last week, homeowner groups packed the council chambers, arguing that legalizing even some units would ruin the city’s single-family neighborhoods and drive down property values.

“It’s political suicide to take on the homeowner groups in that way,” said Sally Richman, director of policy and planning for the Housing Department.

Still, the vote underscored the city’s lack of a plan to address its housing problems, said Blasi and others.

“What we have in L.A. at the moment is a pasted-up, chewing gum-and-baling-wire set of approaches, each of which was fashioned as a short-term solution to a crisis,” Blasi said.

The lack of focus on the part of the city “has been true for the last 10 years,” complained Councilwoman Laura Chick, whose interest in housing was piqued after the 1994 Northridge earthquake destroyed whole blocks of apartment buildings. “There have been committees and blue ribbon committees and task force committees, the recommendations of which have never been put into place.”

Housing activists are right, Chick said, in complaining that there is no champion for housing issues on the council. She said she plans to introduce a motion demanding that the City Council make housing more of a priority.

Council Housing Committee Chairman Rudy Svorinich Jr., who represents the Harbor area, could not be reached for comment.

“There has never been a citywide plan that says, ‘Here are the things we need to do to create an adequate amount of livable affordable housing for our poor residents,’ ” Chick said. “And we’re never going to have quality of life throughout our city until we do that.”