Ocean view homes for less than $500 a month? In California?

No way.

Way. Dude. Way.

Nearly 10 years in the making, in the oceanside town of Pacific Grove, CA where fixer uppers start at $700,000 and multi-million dollar homes are de rigueur, with the sparkling Monterey Bay as a backdrop, the Pacific Grove Senior Apartments, early next year, will give older renters access to 49 apartment homes with amazing views and rents ranging from only $463 to $790 a month.

"Maybe this will mean I only have to work two jobs," said Gail Marmor, 68, from Pacific Grove, who works three jobs to make ends meet and is on the waiting list.

The $9.5 million project at 650 Jewell Ave. is the brainchild of the city of Pacific Grove with the help of a scrappy award winning award-winning, non-profit developer, Gilroy, CA-based South County Housing, Corp. The 25-year-old affordable housing community builder and city government found a way to provide the first affordable housing project ever in a charming hamlet better known as the mating mecca for Monarch butterflies ("Butterfly Town"), zillions of Kodak moments, John Steinbeck and its proximity to Pebble Beach, the Monterey Bay Aquarium and Cannery Row.

The project is scheduled for completion this fall after a painstaking, decade-long, multi-agency effort to acquire financing, land and water allocations (eventually donated by Mr. and Mrs. Wallace Getz, Ms. Judith Smart, and Dr. and Mrs. Robert T. Fry). The project also faced a gauntlet run through a maze of government approvals, including the demanding, and powerful, California Coastal Commission. The commission is so tough, the ribbing goes, seaside worker ants need commission approval to build ant hills.

The apartment project, conveniently located across the street from a head of the Monterey Bay Recreational Trail, the Lover's Point Recreational Area and the Sally J. Griffin Senior Center, comes with a centralized laundry facility, courtyard, community room and each unit has a trellis topped balcony or porch area, many of which provide ocean views. Fund raising efforts could also add a community garden and give the project a permanent name.

The project includes 8 studios, 34 one-bedroom units and 7 two-bedroom units. The housing is available to anyone who qualifies, but preference is going to Pacific Grove residents who are 62 years old and older, earning only between $21,300 and $32,820 (50 to 60 percent of the Monterey County area's median income). Rents will range from $463 for a studio, $548 for a one-bedroom unit and $653 to $790 for larger apartments.

The three-story, gabled-roofed apartment project, with tuck-under parking, is being constructed by Seque Construction in Port Richmond, CA.

The project will be outfitted with so-called "derivative" architectural design by local architect William E. Foster at Flesher & Foster Architects. Foster said the design includes shingle siding and contemporary curved wall forms to simulate bay windows and to reflect existing historical residential buildings in the area.

Julie Uretsky, an associate planner with the city of Pacific Grove said there are 398 names on the waiting list for the project, but some of those on the list have died or moved away since the project was first suggested 10 years ago.

Affordable housing is otherwise nearly impossible to find in Pacific Grove because of its location. On the northern tip of the Monterey Peninsula, the small town has both Pacific Ocean and Monterey Bay views and it shares the peninsula with the city of Monterey (and its world class aquarium and Cannery Row) and the quaint Carmel-by-the-Sea hamlet home of town's former mayor and movie star, producer and director, Clint Eastwood.

"It's unique homes and neighborhoods are in the upward curve of pricing that is beginning to match it's surrounding communities of Pebble Beach and Carmel. A small fixer up now begins in the high $700,000s. There are many multi-million dollar properties nearer the Pacific Ocean," Coldwell Banker's Susan Baxter reported to RealtyTimes.com's Market Conditions report for Pacific Grove.

"Here you will find beautiful walking parks, hometown parades and a sense of community. There are many diverse neighborhoods offered in this town which was founded in 1875 as a Methodist Church Summer Retreat. The town is 2.86 square miles (183 acres). It has a population of approximately 18,000 people. There is some commercial development, but little industrial activity." Baxter said in her report which shows the general housing market firmly in the seller's pocket.

Published: April 7, 2005

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Broderick Perkins parlayed a 30-year career in old-school journalism into a digital-age news service offering editorial content and related consulting services. The award-winning consumer journalist, originally from Wilmington, DE, is founder, publisher and executive editor of the bootstrap DeadlineNews Group, a Silicon Valley-based content provider specializing in residential real estate, consumer news and consulting. An open house for news that really hits home, the DeadlineNews Group includes the umbrella website DeadlineNews.com the flagship blog Deadline Newsroom, and three Examiner.com outposts -- Real Estate News Examiner; Consumer News Examiner; and Offbeat News Examiner. Along with a decade of work here with Realty Times, Perkins also provides content for Silicon Valley based ERate.com and the new AOLNews.com, where now "You've got news....that really hits home." His current work can also be found in Californian publications, the San Jose Mercury News, San Francisco's The Registry and the Salinas Californian. Perkins obtained his formal journalism education from University of Delaware and a journalism boot camp, the Institute of Journalism Education at the University of California-Berkeley. He went on to 20 years of service as a daily newspaper journalist at the Wilmington, DE News Journal and San Jose, CA Mercury News, before launching DeadlineNews Group. Perkins covered housing on the San Jose Mercury News reporting team which earned a General News Reporting Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake. He has also produced real estate, consumer and small business content for the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Better Homes and Gardens, the National Association of Realtors, Homestore/Move and Nolo.com among more than four dozen publications. In addition to managing the DeadlineNews Group, Perkins served as chief editorial consultant for "Nolo's Essential Guide To Buying Your First Home."