The first thing Cathy Rady's daughters did when they moved into their new bedroom - after their bunk beds were set up - was to decorate the walls with mismatched photo frames and shopping bags from their favorite stores.
It's the first time in years the two Hawthorne girls, ages 8 and 13, have had their own space. In their former apartment, which was a one-bedroom down the street, they slept behind a curtain in the dining room.
Rady could only afford the two-bedroom unit in Hawthorne because the city decided to do something unusual for a municipality too small for a government-funded housing authority: It started its own subsidized-housing program.
Since last winter, the city has purchased four apartment buildings, refurbished them, and designated them for low-income tenants at below-market rates. The city also dedicated a building it already owns across from City Hall to the effort.
Rady pays $843 per month for a unit that could fetch about $1,200.
"This apartment is so open," Rady said. "The old apartment was so flimsy and not maintained by the owner like this one. And my girls have their own room."
Hawthorne spent about $4million to buy the buildings, and the Public Works Department has renovated the units with new paint, landscaping, and other fixes. Still, the 34 total units barely make a dent in helping the city's estimated 14,000 low-income residents.
"They have seen that there is a need," said Alex Monteiro, president of Moneta Gardens Inc., a Hawthorne nonprofit that is managing one of the buildings. "They can't just say: `We'll close our eyes.' They're trying to patch up a big problem that they actually don't have a solution to, but they're trying to do something."
State isn't enforcing plan
Hawthorne's efforts are unusual for smaller cities across the state. Most areas - particularly affluent ones like those on the Palos Verdes Peninsula and bordering the beaches - rarely create low-income units, even though the state imposes hefty demands on them to increase the numbers of housing units for all income levels.
The state's plan, called the Regional Housing Needs Assessment requires every city to create housing for people in a variety of income levels, classified as above-moderate, moderate, low and very-low earners.
But the failure of the state to pressure cities to develop below-market housing has effectively resulted in some poorer cities developing their own programs, while richer cities ignore the issue altogether, said Hasan Ikhrata, the executive director of Southern California Association of Governments, the agency that issues the number of local homes that should be built every few years.
Since 1980, cities have been required to submit lengthy needs assessment plans every few years to illustrate how they are making room for these large numbers of new homes.
But Ikhrata says the process doesn't work.
"I have yet to see a person in the whole state to show me that RHNA led to one single affordable house anywhere," Ikhrata told a gathering of local policymakers at a SCAG meeting in May. "I mean that."
According to current requirements, South Bay cities have to plan for a total of 13,733 new housing units by 2014. Of those, 5,765 are designated for people with above-moderate incomes and the remaining are for families with moderate-to-very-low earnings.
In addition to resistance from residents who don't want low-income housing, local cities are rarely motivated to implement needs assessment goals because there is no funding attached. Cities have to seek government grants - as Hawthorne did - or collaborate with nonprofit organizations to create developments.
"If the government wants to provide my city with the funding to build affordable housing, we would do it," said Judy Mitchell, mayor of Rolling Hills Estates and president of the League of California Cities. "It's very difficult for a city like Rolling Hills Estates because our zoning is consistent, our land values are very high, and we don't have any areas that would qualify for a redevelopment agency."
Cities lack funds, land
Most cities that don't create affordable housing argue that - in addition to not having funding - they simply don't have the space to do so because they are built out, or fully developed.
Even in Los Angeles, which has a well-funded housing authority, meeting RHNA guidelines is impossible, said Harbor Area Councilwoman Janice Hahn.
"L.A. is never going to meet (its) RHNA goal," Hahn said. "Because where do you build all these houses? Except for creating more density in certain areas, which I think is hard on our infrastructure."
But Ikhrata calls that an unacceptable excuse.
"Don't bring `I'm built out, I don't have any other places to do it,"' he said. "That doesn't fly. Why? Because you're still growing. Unless you have zero growth, but every city is growing."
Cities that have redevelopment agencies must build some affordable housing because they get set-aside funds from private developers to do so. But they almost always designate that housing for seniors, rather than low-income families. Redevelopment agencies are formed in cities that have run-down areas, such as Carson, Hawthorne, Lawndale, Torrance, Redondo Beach and Inglewood. They allow the cities to offer tax breaks for new development.
Torrance Mayor Frank Scotto said residents would be upset if the City Council attempted to develop low-income housing for anyone but seniors with its redevelopment funds.
"As much as we want to be socially correct, there will be opposition to bringing in an element they perceive as negative," Scotto said. "We'll have to do it in a delicate way."
Since 1993, Torrance has let its redevelopment funds accumulate in lieu of building. The city currently has eight affordable rental housing projects for seniors in the city.
Community opposition to low-income housing makes it nearly impossible for many local politicians to press for it, according to Michael Rawson, a director for California Affordable Housing Law Project.
"Even though the nonprofit community has grown substantially over the past 25 years, so has opposition to building affordable housing," Rawson said. "If you need food stamps, you can get them. If you need unemployment insurance, you can get it no matter how many people are laid off. There are entitlements. There isn't that system for affordable housing."
The federal government's Section 8 housing voucher program is the most popular subsidy for low-income families to get rent discounts. But demand exceeds the available funding. In Los Angeles County last year, 117,000 qualifying families were on the Section 8 waiting list. In Hawthorne and Inglewood, that list is so full that it is closed to new applicants - including Rady.
Rents are too costly
But rents remain out of sync with available wages. Even if a family can afford an apartment, it can be difficult to keep up with payments when extra expenses come along.
Ronald Johnson has a well-paying job as a custodian for the Inglewood Unified School District. But as a single father supporting four sons, he lives check to check.
Johnson was told last month to move out of the Inglewood apartment that he shared with his sons for nearly two years when he got behind on rent payments and was late one too many times.
Without any savings, he couldn't afford the down payment for a new apartment. He found help from a local charity, Catholic Charities' St. Margaret's Center in Lennox, which offered to pay his security deposit and put him up in a motel for two weeks until he found an apartment. But finding an apartment wasn't easy and, with only two weeks in a motel separating him and his boys from homelessness, it was a difficult time.
"I try to keep a level head," Johnson said. "I have to be optimistic, think positive. One of the stressful things is waiting."
His youngest son, Roderick, made the most of the two-bed motel room by watching TV with his older brothers. But he said the move wasn't easy.
"It doesn't feel good, moving from place to place," Roderick said.
After his two weeks were up in the motel, which was on a stretch of road frequented by prostitutes and drug dealers, he moved his family to a cheaper motel until he found a two-bedroom apartment in Inglewood for $1,100 per month.
Jeanne Thomas, homeless services coordinator for St. Margaret's Center, helped Johnson with furniture and additional expenses for the new apartment. Thomas sees situations like Johnson's by the dozen each week.
"The rents are ridiculous. We get a lot of calls from people getting evicted for not paying rent, rent increases, or loss of work," Thomas said. "A lot of it - most of it - is unemployment.
"It's sad because you wouldn't believe the number of calls for rent assistance. One morning I started counting when we opened at 8:30, before 10, we had 32 calls."
Since last fall, Inglewood donated about $100,000 through its Emergency Shelter Grant Program to St. Margaret's Center for motel vouchers and food assistance for struggling families like Johnson's.
Kyle Kazan, chief executive of Long Beach-based Beach Front Real Estate Services, which owns or manages about 3,000 Southern California apartment units including many in the South Bay, said two-bedroom apartment rents range from the low end of about $1,200 in areas like Hawthorne, Gardena and Lawndale to upwards of $4,000 per month for shorline rentals in beach cities.
Families forced to move
High rents force many children who grew up in the South Bay to move inland, said Carson City Manager Cliff Graves.
"We're hearing it from businesses in town who want workers to live closer, and kids who have grown up here and have to leave the area for an apartment," Graves said. "We are definitely behind the curve on affordable housing."
The nationwide economic recession has made development of subsidized homes even more difficult, said Paul Zimmerman, executive director of the Southern California Association of Nonprofit Housing.
"The fundamental question is: `How much do we care about having housing that's affordable for people in our city?' That question has to be answered at every level of government. The free market is not delivering housing at different price points, so an intervention in the marketplace - subsidized housing - is a common-sense thing."
Delia Vechi, a Redondo Beach resident who lives within walking distance of her city's five senior housing developments, thinks the city already has too much dense housing - even though there is no affordable housing for poor families outside a limited number of Section 8 housing vouchers.
"I have been a resident since 1971," said Vechi, whose home is on a wide residential street generously lined with trees and frequented by tanned bike riders, runners and dog walkers. "What I want now is quality of life. We already have high-density housing in Redondo Beach. We need to send those housing projects to other cities like Rolling Hills Estates, Palos Verdes Estates and Manhattan Beach. Why does one city have the obligation while another city doesn't?"
Senior housing opposed
When the city of Palos Verdes Estates opened its doors this year to a nonprofit developer to build 34 apartments in a city-owned building for low-income seniors, residents balked at the idea.
The project - the first limited-income one in the city - was approved in March, but only after city staff said they would eventually face penalties from the state if they didn't start complying somewhat with state RHNA demands.
Affordable housing advocates have been pushing for legislation that provides funding and more enforcement for all cities to build low-income homes.
But there is little hope of a permanent funding source in the near future.
Earlier this year, Sen. Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, introduced Senate Bill 500, a bill to provide permanent funding for affordable housing.
"The current fiscal state has obviously put a hold on that conversation as we figure out how to bridge our deficit," said Alicia Trost, Steinberg's press secretary. "The economy has also led to a shortage of affordable housing because developers aren't building right now. It's just making the problem worse."
But another Steinberg bill - SB375 - was passed last year and has changed the terms of the affordable housing debate by linking the creation of low-income homes with environmental awareness.
It calls for regional areas to develop plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by building dense, affordable housing near transportation hubs. This would locate more housing near jobs to reduce the amount of time people spend in their cars.
"The idea of 375 is to focus growth around transit areas, to integrate housing and jobs closer to each other," Ikhrata told local leaders at the summer SCAG conference. "It asks: Do we have the water and energy resources to continue spreading out? The answer is no."
But implementing this legislation will likely follow the same course as the state's needs assessment process, with willing cities lining up in compliance while others ignore it, Ikhrata said.
"We do have several cities, in every county, who want to do these ideas, and that's where we're going to start focusing to build the scenario," Ikhrata said. "We're going to build it to make sure we put forth something that's sustainable in the future."
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