A Seal Beach citizens’ committee selected seven potential sites for “affordable” housing last week. The issue will now go to the Planning Commission.
The matter was sent back to the committee at the request of Mayor Michael Levitt on Monday, Feb. 13. Levitt was apparently responding to a request from Councilman Gary Miller to revisit the issue during that night’s council meeting.
Residents of Seal Beach’s College Park East neighborhood have objected to the Shops at Rossmoor being designated as a potential site of affordable housing.
The shopping center, despite its name, is actually located in Seal Beach.
Councilman Miller, who represents College Park East, has said there was not enough public notice about the committee meetings that discussed affordable housing sites. Residents of the neighboring community of Rossmoor have also objected to the shopping center as a possible location for affordable housing.
However, the citizen’s committee left the shopping center on the list, along with six other sites that include two Old Town locations.
The Ad Hoc General Plan/Local Coastal Plan Citizens Advisory Committee met on Tuesday, Feb. 14, to revisit the so-called affordable housing segment of the Seal Beach housing element. The housing element is part of the city’s General Plan.
California law requires cities to include potential sites for affordable housing in their housing elements.
A housing element is required before the California Coastal Commission will approve a so-called Local Coastal Plan, which would allow the city to assume some of the state commission’s authority to approve developments within 5 miles of the coastline.
Director of Development Services Mark Persico said the Ad Hoc General Plan committee reviewed 24 sites and recommended seven of them to the Planning Commission.
Persico said that other sites for affordable housing that were considered included the former site of an ARCO station on Pacific Coast Highway, which was demolished prior to decontamination, and property owned by the State Lands Commission on the edge of Old Town.
He said the committee came up with housing sites that were “geographically dispersed.”
Persico said the Boeing Specific Plan area was designated for emergency housing.
He said the liquor store and bait shop on Pacific Coast Highway and Seal Beach Boulevard were on the list last may, but state officials rejected the site.
Persico said that six units of housing could have been built on that corner. However, the state requires 16 units per affordable housing sites.
Persico said that designating sites for affordable housing does not mean the housing will be built.
As previously reported in the Sun, Seal Beach cannot force property owners to build affordable housing on their land if they do not want to build it. The current owners of the Shops at Rossmoor, for example, have indicated they will not build housing in the center.
