ABDUR-RAHIM HAMEED -- Community Commentary

Conservatives like to say that the best anti-poverty program is a job.

But that’s not really true, is it? Because a job is just a temporary

solution, something that can come and go with each rise and fall of the

economic cycle, leaving each of us just one paycheck from poverty.

Unless, of course, we have something better. And for most people, that

“something better” is savings in the form of a house. For generations,

Americans have depended on the equity in their homes to send their kids

to college, fund their retirement and guard against economic catastrophe.

Owning a home is the single most dramatic indicator of how someone will

treat their neighborhood, their schools, even their own family. But

homeownership in California is endangered. Today, more people in Eastern

Europe own their own homes than in California. Our homeownership rates

are dropping and we all know why: the so-called environmental rules and

regulations that kill new housing.

But we cannot forget this: When the dream of owning a home dies in

California, so will the dream of California.

And nowhere is the obituary for homeownership being written in bolder

headlines than the Bolsa Chica in Huntington Beach.

Thirty years ago, the owners of the Bolsa Chica looked out over an

industrial wasteland of oil fields, polluted swamps and heavy equipment

and saw something better -- 1,200 acres of wetlands, parks, a marina,

homes, a school, trails and other amenities.

Soon, a plan was born and approved by the California Coastal

Commission -- but only after dozens of hearings and approvals at a myriad

local, state and federal agencies. Only after every newspaper in the area

supported the plans and only after national planning associations gave

the landowner its top award for excellence.

Then the environmental lawsuits began and the housing stopped. Over

the last 30 years, plans for the Bolsa Chica were changed to add more

wetlands, more parks and more trails. The marina was dropped and the

number of homes reduced from 5,000 to 1,200. The Coastal Commission

approved it twice more, but only after more lawsuits, hundreds of

meetings, extra revisions and more approvals at every level of

government.

Today, the project sits on less than 10% of its original land, the

result of several deals with environmentalists and their lawyers, which

they broke before the ink was dry on their agreements.

The homes, the parks, the school and the trails are still unbuilt on

the Bolsa Chica. The oil wells, degraded wetlands, and heavy equipment

remain: a monument to the death of our dream of homeownership.

To be fair, it must be said that most housing projects today only take

15 years. They should take 15 months, but frivolous lawsuits make sure

that never happens.

I am not totally unbiased in this. A group I founded, the San Diego

Black Contractors Assn. trains young men and women to work as carpenters,

plumbers, pipe fitters and in other jobs in the building trades. So we

see, firsthand, another side of the housing crisis: how, without plans

like Bolsa Chica, fewer homes mean fewer jobs in places that used to be

the best training ground for the unskilled and undereducated. As these

shrink, our permanent underclass grows. And no one seems to notice, let

alone care.

Next week, the Bolsa Chica returns to the California Coastal

Commission. Our workers may be young and often uneducated, but they see

the connection between new homes and hope at places like the Bolsa Chica

because their lives depend on it.

Their last best hope is that California housing regulators at the

Coastal Commission and elsewhere see it too.

* ABDUR-RAHIM HAMEED is the president of the Black Contractors Assn.