AHMANSON RANCH ACHIEVES NOTHING FOR AFFORDABILITY.

Byline: Denise McGranahan Local View

AS an attorney who specializes in affordable-housing issues, I need to expose the fallacy of ex-Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt's claim in his June 19 column (``Ahmanson a winner'') that 25 percent of Washington Mutual's Ahmanson development will be affordable housing.

This development will not solve or even help our affordable-housing crisis. It is not a trade-off between affordable homes and open space. The inclusion of the few affordable units in the project is not a gesture of good will, but a legal requirement that has not been met by the plan.

Almost half of the housing Washington Mutual claims as affordable, or 300 of the 774 units, will be satisfied with ``make-believe'' affordable units in the form of second dwelling units. These are units within the million-dollar-and-up homes that are not even required to be rented.

Wealthy homeowners typically use these units as guest suites for their nannies, caretakers, grandparents or older children; they will likely never be rented.

Washington Mutual's affordable-housing plan also includes 50 single-room occupancy, dormitory units. These units are intended for golf course and hotel employees, who will not be able to bring their families to live with them.

The plan's affordability, as determined in 1992, depended entirely on a strict form of rent control that did not allow for huge rent hikes between tenancies to keep these units affordable. This form of rent control became illegal in California in 1996 (C.C. Section 1954.50). The Ahmanson plan, therefore, has no mechanism now for keeping the housing affordable.

The fact that the Ahmanson affordable-housing plan is not really intended to benefit low- or even moderate-income people is highlighted by the fact that Washington Mutual will only provide 324 units, or 10 percent of the units, for families earning under $89,640. The vast majority of the housing units will be priced from $800,000 to well over $2 million.

Let's not be fooled by rhetoric. Either the majority of the low-income workers who will be employed at Ahmanson Ranch will not earn enough to qualify for most of the so-called affordable units, or there will be few housing opportunities available to them.

Washington Mutual's claim that they are helping to solve our state's affordable-housing problems with this project is simply disingenuous. The plan does not provide enough available affordable units to meet the 1,103 anticipated employees' housing needs, creating a jobs/housing imbalance on-site.

There is no shortage of high-priced homes in the Southland. We need true affordable housing, not a new city of million-dollar estates.

Shame on you, Washington Mutual and Bruce Babbitt, for trying to deceive the public with rhetoric.