Affordable Housing Institute : US

[Continued from yesterday’s Part 1.]

 

Yesterday we saw that Disney, Anaheim’s biggest employer, though it had lost a 3-2 city council vote regarding a proposed high-end residential development, was suing the city to block it and had secured support of at least one useful person, Anaheim’s mayor, Curt Pringle. 

 

We’re friends with the mayor!

 

Mayor Pringle was apparently persuaded by the arguments of Disney’s spokesman:

 

Mr. Doughty of Disneyland said that hotels and restaurants, which operate around the clock, are incompatible with permanent housing. “It doesn’t matter that it’s low-income housing,” he said –

 

The proposed development is 85% condominium, hardly low-income, and I would be astonished if the remaining 15% were not workforce housing.

 

– explaining that Disney objects to any new housing in the resort area.

 

In other words, Disney wants more Disneyland in the area.  This is sounding more and more as if Disney simply covets the site for its own purposes.

 

“How dare you say we have ulterior motives!”

 

Indeed, the company has recently voiced its objection to another proposed project, called Parc Anaheim, at the edge of the resort area.

 

“We’re really for affordable housing, just no property you can possibly imagine.”

 

The SunCal site is about a mile from the Magic Kingdom and half a mile from the company’s second Anaheim theme park, Disney’s California Adventure, which opened in 2001.

 

But it is directly opposite an 88-acre plot on which Disney is considering building a third Anaheim theme park, which is likely to include boutique attractions.  (In Orlando, one such attraction, Disney’s Discovery Cove, costs $249 a day to enter — a price that includes a chance to swim with dolphins.)  

 

 

Mr. Doughty confirmed that the third park was a possibility, but said it would probably not be announced this year.

 

Evidently Disneyland’s growth is landlocked, chafing at its growth:

 

In the 1990s, Disney actually considered expanding its Southern California theme park operations outside Anaheim. (After learning its lesson in Anaheim, where it failed to buy enough land for its future growth, the company bought more than 25,000 acres in Florida before opening Walt Disney World in 1971.)

 

While Disney may wish to expand, and Anaheim may wish that too, Anaheim also needs more housing:

 

Cynthia Ward, an architectural historian who lives in Anaheim, said that “there is essentially no place left to live in Orange County for people with extremely low-income jobs,” but that, even so, the resort area should be protected. “Yes, we need affordable housing,” she said, “but it doesn’t have to be on that site.”  The median home price in the county last year was more than $600,000.

 

From the 1960s until the 1980s, the area outside Disneyland “really deteriorated,” Ms. Ward said. Its rows of cheap hotels and restaurants, she said, “were tacky and disjointed.”

 

Instead of building elsewhere, Disney persuaded Anaheim to create the resort area, whose main streets were then turned into idyllic palm-tree-lined corridors leading to the theme parks. “Sometimes, people who live in Anaheim complain that they’re not getting the same street improvements,” Ms. Ward said. “But we understand how much money tourism brings.”

 

To pay for the improvements, the city levied a “bed tax” on hotels in the resort area.

 

Taxes are fun in bed!

 

Generally known as a soak-the-tourists tax, a favorite of mayors everywhere.

 

That tax now brings Anaheim some $80 million a year — which, when combined with sales and property taxes from the resort, represent more than a third of the city’s general fund. The bed tax revenue is expected to increase as more hotels are built, and Mayor Pringle said the city had already borrowed against that anticipated revenue.

 

That’s a fascinating tidbit, since it gives the city a huge financial interest in seeing more hotels go up, because they’ve already funded improvements (read: generated current political capital) based on the economically implicit promise of doing what Disney wants.

 

Promise me you’ll let me build more hotels and resorts

 

That, he said, means that a failure to build more hotels in the resort district could cloud the city’s economic future.

 

Pretty tawdry and short-sighted behavior in my view.

 

Your future has been hocked here

 

Disney’s plan to protect its interests has gone beyond suing the city. It has called for a referendum that would allow voters to overturn the City Council’s decision. That could come to a vote next February, Mr. Pringle said.

 

We thus see that Disney is mounting a multi-front campaign. 

 

“We got lots o’ different arguments, we’re gonna use ‘em all.”

 

The lawsuit is probably a dead loser, but it creates political pressure, on the three beleaguered city councilors, and potentially on the voters as well.  Finally, if you want to know the absolute tipoff that Disney knows its legal case is insubstantial, here it is:

 

And the company is behind a separate voter initiative that would make the resort zoning part of Anaheim’s city charter. “It would lock in permanently the boundaries of the resort area,” Mr. Doughty said.

 

So, Mr. Doughty, if (as you said before), “companies like Marriott and Disney and Hilton make their investment decisions on what they assume the zoning is going to be,” then they wouldn’t need this voter initiative, would they?

 

The voter initiative is being pushed by an organization called SOAR, for Save Our Anaheim Resort. Opponents of the initiative who favor the low-income housing have their own acronym: Yimby, for “Yes in Mickey’s Backyard.”

 

Mr. Elfend of SunCal called Disney’s tactics “very heavy-handed.”

 

Look, look, we’re not really for affordable housing, Mr. Mouse!

 

I agree with Mr. Elfend.

 

“Historically,” he said, “they’ve had so much power in Anaheim that they think they can control the development of land they don’t even own.”

 

It certainly seems that way.

 

But Mr. Doughty said, “It’s not just about this one development — if one developer is allowed to build residential in the resort area, others will follow.”

 

Goodness — you mean people might actually want to live here?

 

If you let people move in, God knows what will happen next!

 

Mr. Doughty said that Disney supported the building of affordable housing in other locations.

 

Anywhere but where Disney wants to build.

 

“Anaheim and Orange County have to address the affordable housing issue, but Anaheim also has to protect the resort area,” he said. “It’s not an either/or.”

 

Recognizing the potential for a black eye, Disney’s CEO Robert Iger, recently tried to sound like a good neighbor:

 

I speak for the mouse around here.

 

“We believe that there should be affordable housing in this area, that is it’s an effort that should be a partnership between the local government and a number of businesses,” Iger said. “Given all of the employees, or cast members as we call them, that we have here, we believe that giving them affordable housing in an area that’s proximate to their place of work is something that we should all work to create.  But we don’t believe that the property that’s being talked about is property that should be developed for housing.  We just don’t believe it’s what’s called recreation- or business-friendly, nor would it throw off as much in taxes as the businesses that could go into that place.”

 

There it is, folks — NIMBYism and self-interest, neatly packaged.

 

Walt must be spinning in his grave.

 

And we make sure no poor people live there, okay Walt?

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