Under local law, Ojai allows
construction of just 11 houses and five apartments each year, unless
the new development is for so-called affordable housing, which limits
its sale or rental price. Developers haven't been willing to build
much under such restrictions, he said. And overall, the city has approved
fewer than the 16 market-rate dwellings its policy allows.
“Most of our residential activity is rehab or additions to housing,”
he said.
Kersnar said he thinks the new population figures may show that Ojai
is following the path of high-priced communities along the California
coast, where many workers simply can't afford to live any more.
“There is a loss of the middle class in some of these communities,”
he said, “and that may be happening here as well. But we won't
know until the data is in from the (federal) census in 2010.”
Coastal communities such as Santa Barbara, and wealthy communities
in the Bay Area and Los Angeles County, have experienced this loss
of middle class families in recent years, as homes have become too
expensive for professionals such as firefighters, teachers and police
officers.
“Ojai is changing,” Kersnar said. “It's going to
be a different place: Better in some ways, worse in others. If more
people see this as a second home, it's harder to maintain a community
... But it also may mean less traffic congestion and fewer people
using the park. We'll know whether it's good or bad in 20 years. Then
you can ask the same question.”
A steady drop in enrollment in the Ojai Unified School District supports
the conclusion that Ojai is losing its middle-class families; the
number of students has dropped from about 4,200 in 1999 to about 3,200
this year, or a decline of nearly one quarter. Another 5 percent drop
is projected for next fall, with similar declines expected for several
years after that.
Ojai's home prices per square foot are among the highest in Ventura
County, which is the one of the priciest in the state.
“This raises issues such as what jobs are here, and what jobs
should be here, considering their effect on traffic by commuters who
can't afford to live here,” Kersnar said.
Ventura County as a whole has faced such questions in recent years
as home prices have soared, forcing middle-class workers to commute
from cheaper areas such as the Antelope Valley.
Once a commuter county,
Ventura now also has a steady flow of vehicles into it each morning
— a development that has caused greater air pollution.
Another aspect of this sheer demographic shift is what will become
of local public schools, some of which have been honored for their
quality in recent years.
Tim Baird, superintendent of the Ojai Valley Unified District, said
the implications are significant. Enrollments have declined, and so
do the number of teachers and aides who serve them.
“Obviously, we have fewer families in the community today,”
Baird said. “And obviously we have fewer people who understand
our issues.
“I don't know what an older Ojai will look like,” he said.
“But what Ojai has always been is a community where children
are playing in the streets, where there are family activities and
where there are recreational activities for children. I worry that
as the community ages, we may have less of an emphasis on that; I
worry that it may change what Ojai looks like and feels like.”
There are educational challenges to the shift, Baird said. More students
are poorer today than ever, and fewer speak English as their native
language. Maybe 10 percent of students were Latino two decades ago,
and now it's close to 30 percent, he said. And many are native Spanish
speakers and low income.
As the community becomes older and richer on one end, and younger
and poorer on the other, “it multiplies the challenges,”
Baird said. “As those ranges get further apart it just makes
the challenges harder.”
Unlike many public schools in many communities, Ojai's compete with
several private schools for local students, he said. So it must offer
more.
“We provide a quality education for all of our students, but
we compete with private schools, so we offer a strong AP (advanced
placement) program, better arts and music, and more options on everything.
“We also educate students who don't speak English, who come
from poverty and who don't have books to read in their homes,”
he said.
“So we deal with challenges we didn't have before.”
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