Low Income Housing or Money Grab by SunCal?

[dphoto]

Pete on the podcasts talked about issue #4 the “low income housing debacle” referring to the battle between SunCal and Disney.

But in my limited reading of some of the news stories, the whole deal looked a lot more like a big money grab by SunCal and the “low income housing” was just a ploy. According to the reports, inn exchange for providing 15% rent subsidized housing (the net was about 287 rent subsidized units); SunCal would see the land value roughly triple if they could get it rezoned. So SunCal stood to make a lot of money if they could get the property rezoned so they could build expensive condo’s for rich people while setting aside some token units for rent subsidies to get the deal to go through.

SunCal wasn’t in building these units so a very few poor Disney employees would have a place to live, they were doing it to make a lot of money for themselves. The whole “low income housing” angle looked like a cynical marketing ploy to make Disney look bad, so SunCal could make money.

While I am a Disney fan, I’m not a fan of everything the Disney Company does. I know the Disney management can be money grubbing and I think they should pay the executives a lot less and pay the employees more. But in this case, the real issue was not about low income housing, it was two big companies trying to have things their way and using whatever tactics they could muster to influence public opinion. If SunCal really wanted to provide low income housing, there are plenty of other places they could build it. They latched onto the low income housing just to make Disney look bad while SunCal stood to profit big time by getting the zoning changed. The ploy certainly seemed to work on Pete.

Personally, I think it is a good idea to have an “amusement zone” where there is no housing. If they let people move into the zone, then before you know it they are complaining about the traffic and the noise. I would like to see the Disney workers treated better, but that is not what the low income housing was really about.

 

[dwelty]

I totally agree with you. While I agree with most of what Pete says about Disney, All I heard from him on this story was how Disneyland got a black eye from this because of fighting low income housing. For Disney, this was about any housing next to the "third gate", as developing that property would become a great deal more difficult with complaning residents next door. The other units in the complex (the vast majority) were slated to sell for up to 450k.

Sun Cal was in it for the money, like any developer is. It was an LA Times reporter who started the "Low income" angle, and Pete bought it hook, line and sinker.

The Orange County Register, for the most part did not take the "Low income" angle, and as a result provided much more objective reporting on this one.

As to the "black eye" Disneyland received on this, it is sure not showing at the turnstiles, as attendance at DLR is as high as ever, and 70% of these visitors are locals who read these occasional stories buried on the 4th page of their local papers. As a So Cal resident, I heard more about this story on the DIS than in the local media. Southern California is not like Orlando where everything revolves around the "Mouse".

I think most people here could have cared less about the whole thing.