• MAR 05 THU

• 被選定聯開宅的住戶怨6800低租金，拒借場地給北市府開記者會 PK 憂社會住宅拖垮房價，美河市居民擬告北市府

Marin Blocks Lucas' Plans for Poorhouse

As a real estate developer in the San Francisco Bay Area, billionaire filmmaker George Lucas hasn’t had much success lately. Last year, his pitch for a museum in the Presidio, the national park at the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge, went to Chicago following a swell of opposition. Two years before that, plans for a massive movie production studio in Marin County, where Lucas owns thousands of acres of land and where Lucasfilm was based for decades, wascompared to Hearst Castle, with Lucas its Citizen Kane. Fierce resistance from nearby homeowners and the threat of a lawsuit over potential impact to a watershed led Lucas to scrap the project.

Afterwards, a dejected Lucasfilm statement declared that the company would seek support from “communities that see us as a creative asset, not as an evil empire.”

Now, Lucas is trying again, and not in some distant, amicable place, but in the same feisty stretch of Marin where the studio proposal inspired so much “bitterness and anger,” as the Lucasfilm statement put it. On Wednesday, Lucas’ holding company, Skywalker Properties, filed a preliminary proposal with county planners that seems more like a plea for acceptance than a development scheme.

On a 1,000 acre property called the Grady Ranch, he wants to build 224 units of affordable housing for seniors, cops, teachers and other working people struggling to get by in this famously affluent county, where the median income is nearly $91,000 and where affordable housing is all but non-existent. Not only that, Lucas has set aside the vast majority of the property as open space—some 800 acres—and he plans to finance the entire thing himself at a cost, according to his lawyer, Gary Giacomini, of “north of $150 million.”

The purpose of this, Giacomini said, is three-fold. By paying for it himself, Lucas can avoid the regulation-laden grants that typically fund affordable housing projects. He can ensure that the categories of people he wants to see living there—teachers and seniors, for instance—will always have a place.

"People are nervous—they’re afraid of something that might endanger the largest investment they will ever make."

“If you have federal or state money, you can’t do that,” Giacomini said. “You can’t discriminate.” Underlying that, he said, is an altruistic drive to provide housing for Marin’s non-millionaire class.

“There’s nowhere a local teacher or nurse can live,” Giacomini recalled Lucas saying.

But it’s not as if all county residents take the same view. Mary Stompe, executive director of the non-profit that would develop and manage Lucas’ project, said there’s been a “very, very vocal” opposition to affordable housing projects in Marin County over the last half decade. There’s a concern, she said, about increased traffic, and about the possibility that lower income people will drag property values and increase crime.

“People tend to point to a few bad eggs,” she said. The result is a rental market in which one-bedrooms go for $2,000 per month and the vacancy rate hovers around two percent. The waiting list for an affordable unit through the county is 10 years, she said.

“Since people found out about this project, our phones are ringing off the hook,” Stompe said. “People are telling me, ‘Please add me to the list.’”

On the tidy suburban side streets of Lucas Valley, the small, unincorporated community surrounded by the majestic hills where Lucas’ project would be built, people seemed exasperated, both by the news of another Lucas development and by the way they expected their fellow residents to respond.

“We’ll see if people get ferociously angry against low-cost housing,” said a Jennifer Knoll, a stay-at-home mother, 20-year resident of the valley and wife of a Lucasfilm employee. “How can you do that?”

Greg Stilson, a 49-year-old portfolio manager, had an answer. “People are nervous—they’re afraid of something that might endanger the largest investment they will ever make,” he said. “What happens to the homeowners is not as much of a concern to [Lucas].”

A man who wouldn’t give his name for fear of being dragged into the political turmoil that deemed certain to follow, wasn’t so diplomatic.

“Asshole,” he barked at the mention of Lucas’ name. He didn’t believe that Lucas would undertake an affordable housing project without a bottom line in mind, nor did he like Lucas’ style, or the style of his entourage. Also, he doesn’t want Lucas messing with those majestic hills at all.

“I’d like to see nothing done,” he said. Though the man was nervous about advocating against the project, he added, “I’d be willing to put in some time and effort to stop this thing.”

Giacomini anticipates a fight. But then again, he added, this is Marin, and if a development includes more than one house, he always anticipates a fight. So why will this one go forward?

“There’s going to be an awful lot of support,” Giacomini said. “There’ll be a face. It’ll be seniors and teachers. It’ll be hard to attack it.”

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/04/19/marin-blocks-lucas-plans-for-poorhouse.html

2015年04月19日

【陳怡妏╱綜合外電報導】以電影《星際大戰》聞名的好萊塢名導喬治盧卡斯最近改打階級戰爭，他原想在風光明媚的加州馬林郡蓋片場，卻遭當地富豪居民強力反對，上周三向當局申請改建可容納224戶中低收入戶的社會宅，讓富豪鄰居們氣得跳腳。

盧卡斯（George Lucas）1978年斥資1億美元（約31億元台幣）在馬林郡大舉收購土地，成立以《星際大戰》（Star Wars）角色為名的「天行者電影片場」。 

自費供貧戶入住

盧卡斯近年有意擴建片場，卻遭當地富豪居民以「會嚴重影響自然景觀和社區交通」強力反對，威脅告上法院阻止動工。
片場擴建計劃停擺2年後，盧卡斯周三重提建築申請，將自掏腰包興建給年收不到315萬元台幣的中低收入戶和銀髮族居住的社會宅，佔地約22甲，還有社區活動中心、游泳池、農田、穀倉等設施，1.5億美元（約46.6億元台幣）工程款全由盧卡斯負擔，最快可望2018年動工，2019年完工。 

喬治盧卡斯的社會宅將坐落在加州馬林郡這處景色秀麗的山谷。翻攝美國《華盛頓郵報》

「把藥頭帶進來」

盧卡斯強調社會宅是要造福社區，「這裡已有夠多富豪，我們需要可供一般勞工階級居住的房子。」但當地居民聯合會主席雷娜特批評：「這根本是在挑起階級戰爭。」居民也因為盧卡斯要改建社會宅分裂成兩派，批評那些反對蓋片場的居民「把藥頭帶進社區」。不過盧卡斯否認是為了報復鄰居，「我不是要把時間和金錢用在惹毛鄰居。」 

喬治盧卡斯（George Lucas）

年齡：70歲（1944/05/14出生）
身家：50億美元（約1553億元台幣）
家庭：有2段婚姻，2013年與夢工廠動畫董事長賀伯森結婚，同年透過代理孕母生下1女
作品：《星際大戰》系列、《法櫃奇兵》系列電影等
獲獎
．1973年金球獎最佳音樂及喜劇類電影《美國風情畫》
．2002年金酸莓獎最差劇本《星際大戰二部曲：複製人全面進攻》等
資料來源：綜合外電 

 人民網 — 2014年05月06日