Affordable Housing

Four current and former Irwindale officials, including a councilman, have been charged with spending thousands of dollars in city money on lavish business trips to New York that included outings to five-star restaurants and Broadway shows, baseball games and rounds of golf. The four are accused of traveling to New York for up to six days at a time, allegedly to get a higher bond rating for the city, then improperly treating themselves to entertainment such as Yankee and Mets games and shows including "Phantom of the Opera" and "Mamma Mia!

Rancho Cucamonga City Councilman Rex Gutierrez was convicted of conspiracy, theft and fraud Wednesday for taking a salary in a San Bernardino County government job allegedly arranged by a politically connected developer in which he did little work. Prosecutors charged that instead of doing his job, Gutierrez took trips to Las Vegas and Monterey, Calif., representing the city of Rancho Cucamonga, and also that he informed his colleagues that he worked for developer Jeff Burum and not the county.

Bell's former Chief Administrative Officer Robert Rizzo and two other top officials got a portion of their lucrative compensation by taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from a fund that was supposed to be used to provide housing for low-income residents, according to a state audit released Wednesday. The audit of the Bell Community Redevelopment Agency also found that the city wrongly spent about $180,000 of the affordable housing funds on cellphones, car washes, car batteries and landscaping while City Council members ?

The building that is likely to be the biggest commercial real estate development started in Los Angeles County this year is not part of a movie studio, aerospace venture or other type of business readily associated with the area. It's all about hot sauce. Huy Fong Foods, best known as the maker of Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce with a rooster depicted on the label, broke ground this week on a 655,000-square-foot, $40-million headquarters and factory in Irwindale. The project will nearly triple the space occupied by Huy Fong, which now operates out of two buildings in Rosemead that it will give up when the new facility is finished.

Not wheeler-dealers Re "Arrested redevelopment: Affordable housing gets short shrift," Oct. 3 Kudos for another insightful and troubling investigation. The corruption of those involved in the article is enough to make you sick to your stomach, when you think of the money lost and the lack of accountability. Many city officials apparently think they are wheeler-dealers who can pull together complex projects, when in fact they are dilettantes. If they were really competent at such deals, they would be in the private sector.

Cities across California have skirted or ignored laws requiring them to build affordable homes and in the process mismanaged hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars, a Times investigation has found. At least 120 municipalities ? nearly one in three with active redevelopment agencies ? spent a combined $700 million in housing funds from 2000 to 2008 without constructing a single new unit, the newspaper's analysis of state data shows. Nor did most of them add to the housing stock by rehabilitating existing units.

Southern California real estate investor John Long has jumped back into the residential market by taking over a foreclosed portfolio of affordable apartments valued at $3.4 billion. Long, a well-known contrarian investor, has entered a partnership with a division of Citigroup Inc. and affordable housing specialist Michael Costa to own and operate the 275 complexes with 80,000 residents in 34 states. Their new company is called Highridge Costa Housing Partners. Nearly half of their complexes in the formerly troubled portfolio are in California.

Officials broke ground Saturday on a new residence hall that will provide 196 units of affordable housing near Los Angeles International Airport for low-income veterans. With airplanes thundering overhead at close range — sometimes as often as one minute apart — U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, Victoria Reggie Kennedy (wife of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy) and veterans from each branch of the Armed Services celebrated the $34.9-million project, which is expected to open in the fall of 2011.

First of two parts Dirt is cheap in the Victor Valley, and amid tumbleweeds and rabbit brush, Joshua trees and juniper bushes, home developments rise up like islands where the desert has been rolled back. About 300,000 people call this region home. Baked in the summer, frozen in winter, it is scoured by winds that sweep down the mountains — and yet they come, drawn by what they can't find elsewhere in Southern California: the promise of large and affordable houses in clean and safe neighborhoods.