LA. Must Find Room for Working Class.

I read Christopher Keough's Feb. 5 article "Will Rich Opt to Be Neighbors With Working Class?" with growing incredulity.

I was surprised to see the thesis of the article being given serious treatment, and then I was astonished to see the inane statements by the various "experts," all of whom had previously seemed to be reasonably knowledgeable members of the real estate development community.

Regardless of one's position on whether Playa Vista should be developed (that is a continuing controversy not relevant to this discussion), I cannot see how any knowledgeable developer can think that the mixture of housing units being proposed is "impossible."

We are not involved with Playa Vista in any way, but I know that the Playa Vista development team consulted with some of the best and most experienced organizations in the Los Angeles area, and the nation, prior to completing their development plan. and they seem to be doing exactly the right thing.

Playa Vista is not creating a new model of development. The concept of mixed-use development and mixed-income housing has been proven throughout North America, going back regionally to the Irvine Ranch development plan in Orange County. Each of the proposed housing developments is separate, with a unique identity, and each will be marketed to a different customer group. Their incomes may be different, as will their ages, marital status and family size. Some residents will be older, from more established households, and others will be younger, starting their careers. They will apparently all have one thing in common: a desire to live near their jobs, and near the recreational opportunities of Marina del Rey and the beaches.

Playa Vista is attempting to create a more balanced community on the last major piece of vacant land in Los Angeles. To refer to residents paying up to $4,000 per month for a rental apartment as "lower-class" is ludicrous. Quoting Brentwood real estate brokers as saying that people with different incomes have "vastly different lifestyles and need to be separated by physical barriers or distance" smacks of the stereotyping common in the deep South before the 1960s, not the new millennium Los Angeles.

Los Angeles has long suffered from open and hidden racism -- classism and economic segregation are no less objectionable. To imply, as this comment does, that different economic groups should be separated from each other brings to mind the walled ghettos of Europe. That model of social segregation is no less objectionable for being based on economic status than it was when it was based on religious or ethnic status.

Finally, your writer failed to realize that the incomes of the projected residents of the less expensive Playa Vista housing units are working families -- what we used to call the "middle class." As Kenneth Agid said, the "affordable units" will be marketed toward families earning up to $60,000 per year. It is a sad day when the private real estate industry cannot produce housing for middle-income working families, and any new housing built that those families can afford is stigmatized.

The city of Los Angeles, its elected representatives (from the top down) and most of the business community have too long ignored the growing crisis in housing affordability. While we are not yet there, the same forces that are driving industry out of San Francisco and Silicon Valley are building here. The primary one is housing cost - middle-income working families can no longer afford to live within a reasonable distance from their jobs. That leads them to move to the distant suburbs, contributing to the congestion for which Los Angeles is famous the world over.

If housing cannot be made available to workers, businesses will follow them out of the city. The long-term result in other metropolitan areas is a hollowed-out central city with low-paid service-sector jobs inhabited by underemployed residents, surrounded by affluent suburbs which do not contribute to the economy or the tax base of the central city. I am fairly sure that your readers would like to avoid that result.

G. Allan Kingston is president and chief executive of Century Housing, a nonprofit corporation based in Culver City.