HOME COST THREATENS VALLEY LIFE.

Byline: - James Nash

The San Fernando Valley is home to a vibrant business community, pleasant and diverse neighborhoods - and skyrocketing home prices that threaten both of those things, business leaders were told Wednesday.

Henry Cisneros, former head of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and now a home builder in the Valley, said the Valley and Los Angeles are built up so political leaders need to focus on redeveloping blighted and vacant pockets of land to ease the housing shortage.

``It is a virtual certainty that the the supply and demand imbalance will create a crisis in affordability,'' Cisneros said in an interview after San Fernando Valley Info Summit 2003, sponsored by the Economic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley.

Cisneros and other speakers, including Liam McGee, president of Bank of America California and the local United Way, focused on the need to build far more affordable housing or face the consequences of communities deeply divided between rich and poor.

Fewer than one-third of households in Los Angeles County can afford a median-price home, according to the California Association of Realtors. In January, 30 percent of Los Angeles County households earned enough to afford a median-price home, which is the point at which half the homes sell for more and half for less, the association reported.

Cisneros, whose company American CityVista has built homes in Sylmar and Panorama City, said the prices put homeownership out of reach of many immigrants and middle-income families, who once flocked to the Valley in search of homes.

``The faces may look different, but the dream is the same, and the dream is homeownership in the San Fernando Valley,'' he said. ``The heyday of homeownership in the San Fernando Valley need not be in the 1950s and 1960s.''

Cisneros ticked off many of the Valley's assets: Its location in the heart of the Los Angeles metropolitan area, its vibrant economy encompassing everything from heavy industry to entertainment, and its diverse population with a range of skills.

However, he said, housing in the region is lagging further behind economic growth. In most areas, there is one house built per 1 1/2 jobs created, he said. In Los Angeles, the ratio is one house per five jobs.