First in a series.
When City Hall seeks to trumpet an urgent community meeting, they start rolling out announcements weeks in advance, as they have with a March 23 discussion on affordable housing.
Here is the kernel of the 7 o’clock evening, a regular City Council meeting, in the Rotunda Room of the Vets Auditorium:
“The City Council/Housing Authority Board is requested to discuss long-term and short-term funding options to address the significant shortfall of funds available for local housing programs resulting from the dissolution of California’s Redevelopment Agencies by operation of State Law on Feb.1, 2012. The dissolution of the Redevelopment Agency resulted in a reduction of millions of dollars in financial resources for local housing programs and related activities.”
In 2011, when Gov. Brown was feeling his oats upon returning to the ultimate power seat he had surrendered decades earlier, he shot dead the Redevelopment Agencies that were crucial to hundreds of California communities. His objective: To channel Agency revenue into his own coffers to balance the state budget.
Communities, among them Culver City, suffered.
Government has ordered communities to provide a certain amount of affordable housing. Elimination of Redevelopment exacerbated their task – hence the March 23 meeting, three years and two months after Agencies passed into history.
The question posed to City Councilman Andy Weissman was:
What will happen and what should happen on this evening?
“We understand the issue of affordability,” he said. “We understand the desirability of creating a bit more affordable housing.”
Here is where euphemisms entered.
“We have had rental assistance programs in place for many years,” Mr. Weissman said.
However, he added, “rental assistance is not the same as affordable housing. Back when we had Redevelopment – this is becoming an old song – and we had a low- and moderate-income housing fund, we had money that could have been used to build affordable housing.”
Now, Mr. Weissman was onto a crucial matter.
(To be continued)