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California
Simi Valley Smart Growth Project Faces Dual Task of Creating Affordable Housing and Quality Jobs
Vacant since the 1994 earthquake, a 6.1-acre Simi Valley site is now being developed by Colton Lee Communities as a walkable, mixed-use Marketplace complex, including 72 townhouses and a three-story senior apartment building with 27 affordable and 9 market-rate units, the city's first smart-growth ''village-style'' project, reports Ventura County Star writer Anna Bakalis, a model city leaders will promote to meet their double challenge -- build housing the workforce can afford and create quality jobs residents now perform elsewhere.
''There are too many residents commuting out of town to work,'' pointed out Simi Valley Economic Development Director Brian Gabler. ''Ideally, everyone who lives here would work here, too.''
The average resident commute is 30 minutes, while most local workers live outside because of high city housing prices, the writer notes, quoting Mayor Paul Miller, who said, ''It's always a challenge for any city to get the right balance.''
Although the average salary in the city's education and health services rose from $33,700 in 1999 to $43,450 in 2006, its median home price that year was $583,580.
That means, the writer observes, that such a home, with a 20 percent down payment and a 30-year loan at a fixed 6.07 percent interest rate would require a $2,820 monthly mortgage payment, which would take 78 percent of a school or health worker's salary.
Area Housing Authority Executive Director Doug Tapking, who has long advocated more workforce housing, sees a silver lining in the current housing market slump.
Expecting prices to drop, he is convinced that workers, ''once they are qualified for loans, will have a much better chance to get into homes.'' -- Ventura County Star 1/6/2008
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