HOUSING CRISIS LOOMS IN VENTURA COUNTY.

Byline: Samuel Staley Local View

A housing crisis is looming in Ventura County, but most people don't know it yet. A severe housing shortage will hit the county later this decade unless residents and officials act now.

The Save Open-space and Agricultural Resources measure, popularly called the SOAR initiative when voters adopted it in 1998, codified much of the county's previous growth-management policies, including growth boundaries, while adding a significant new dimension. Now rezoning of any land designated as agricultural or open space has to be approved at the ballot box before the property can be developed.

According to SOAR proponents, the county would easily be able to accommodate 60,000 new housing units, about the amount the Ventura County Council of Governments projected would be needed by 2020. Unfortunately, no one actually analyzed plan capacities to verify the estimate at the time. A new study conducted by the Reason Public Policy Institute and Solimar Research Group found that this estimate was unrealistic and ignored the realities of the plan approval process.

The low estimate isn't the only problem. At current trends, new housing is being approved at densities 45 percent below the maximums allowed in the county's comprehensive plans. As a result, the county will run out of space for new housing in most communities by 2010. Four cities - Camarillo, Moorpark, Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks - will run out of housing by 2008. Only Ojai and Santa Paula are likely to meet their housing goals, mainly because few housing units are being proposed in those areas.

Thus, unless the growth boundaries are expanded or densities for new projects increase significantly, a countywide housing shortage will begin to emerge 10 years before the expiration of the SOAR initiatives in 2020.

When you have a housing shortage, you are also likely to have a housing affordability problem.

Prices skyrocket, and many middle-class families will choose to cash out by selling their homes and moving to other areas.

City and county officials have three possible ways out of this dilemma, but none is likely to be popular.

First, cities could begin approving projects at higher densities. By increasing density, through either in-fill or approving more units for new projects, Ventura County cities can mitigate the immediate effects of land shortage.

Even if new projects are approved at the maximum densities, however, the county and its cities are likely to experience a housing shortage by 2020. Moreover, the higher densities would likely change the character of neighborhoods, prompting grass-roots opposition.

Second, planners and elected officials can expand the growth boundaries. This will likely be a tough sell: One reason local communities passed ballot-box zoning requirements was to slow development. Nevertheless, this may be the only effective way to increase the supply of land for new housing significantly.

Third, citizens can scrap SOAR and move to a different approach. Rather than relying on growth boundaries to constrain development in rural areas, the communities could adopt rules that allow for the administrative approval of projects at higher densities if they meet certain performance criteria - e.g., on traffic, noise, infrastructure impacts, etc.

This, of course, requires adopting a different growth-management philosophy, one that may rely more on market forces than traditional planning and one that

would be more long term in its approach.

With more than 30 years of experience with growth controls, Ventura County is an excellent case study of the practicality of growth management. If growth management doesn't work well in Ventura County, it is unlikely to work anywhere.

County residents and public officials have boxed themselves in. By failing to accommodate new development at densities consistent with their comprehensive plan, they are faced with an impending housing crisis that throws the efficacy of SOAR-type initiatives into question.

Solving these problems will require elected officials and citizens to come to grips with these issues right away.

If not, they risk creating a significant affordable housing crisis in the not-so-distant future.