by Martha Sadler

Ed Moses — the embattled head of the county’s Housing and
Community Development department — is heading south to take a job
as chief executive officer of the Area Housing Authority for
Ventura County. Despite speculation from friends and foes alike
that he was forced out, Moses insists his July 28 departure has
“nothing to do” with the audit of the affordable housing program he
administered. Rather, he said, the new job is 15 minutes from his
Oxnard home and high-school aged son.

Moses has been a strong partisan player in battles to create
more affordable housing over objections from anti-development
activists. His adversaries have accused him of allowing
beneficiaries to take unfair advantage of the county’s affordable
homeownership program. Supporters pointed out that all of the
program’s affordable houses were created and sold to their first
owners before he came onboard, and Moses himself administered the
program’s first audit. Those initial results prompted the Board of
Supervisors to order a more intensive, independent audit by the
county executive office, which Moses claims he supports. He feels
that the program “needed to be saved. It is an extremely important
program, one of the only producers of affordable housing that this
county has.” Moses added that he is proud of helping to extend the
program to include middle-class workers making up to 200 percent of
the area’s median income, and of helping to plan an additional 132
affordable homes for the North County.

Moses said he will continue to work with Santa Barbara County as
part of a three-county task force he created to raise equity funds
for middle-class workforce housing. Meanwhile, results from the
continuing investigation into ineligible homeowners’ alleged abuse
of the program are due to the Board of Supervisors on July 25, to
be followed by an audit of the department’s other affordable
housing programs.

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