Housing Market Meltdown Hits Home

The relatively new Stone Canyon Preserve homes in Northeast Claremont made headlines last month. ABC News ran a story about the problems created by the mortgage crisis hitting upscale McMansion owners, and they focused on several homeowners in the Stone Canyon homes.

No demographic, it seems, is immune to the wave of foreclosures and short sales hitting the real estate market. The ABC story, appropriately filed under "Reality Check" on ABC's news site, paints a grim picture:

Losing an Investment

People once had to place their names on a waiting list to buy a luxury home, but now owners trying to sell compete with new homes offered at lower prices, bank-owned properties and so-called "short sales," in which a home sells for less than the value of the mortgage.

Compounding the problem, buyers have disappeared because the subprime and 100 percent loans that made so much growth possible are gone.

"The people who qualified for the kinds of loans that bought these houses no longer qualify," said Char Constantino, a broker with Century 21.

Not only do those people no longer qualify, but many who did take risky financing are losing their homes. Foreclosures in Los Angeles were up 381 percent in the last quarter of 2007 from the same period the previous year.

This marks the second time a housing market crash has hit the north Claremont Stone Canyon land hard. The first occasion was back in the early 1990's. At that time, the city of Claremont had worked out a complicated deal with Pomona College wherein the city would purchase the land that would become the Claremont Wilderness Park as well as the land that later became Stone Canyon.

The plan was for the City to then develop the land and be left with the Wilderness Park. Yes folks, Claremont, under then-City Manager Glenn Southard, was going into the home building business.

However, the development plans fell through because Southard, with that golden touch that only he had, managed to pick the worst of possible times (a recession and real estate crash) to become a housing speculator.

The city had paid some $1.2 million in option payments to Pomona College over two or three years, but stopped making those payments and negotiated an exit strategy. In exchange for the option payments made, and the commitment to fast-track the specific plan that allowed Pomona College to sell the developable property, wrapped up and tied with a bow, to Centex Homes, the City could have the 1220-acre Wilderness Park property, stripped of its development credits.

The Claremont 400 would have you forget that one reason the Stone Canyon Preserve homes are the boxy McMansions you see now is that the City and Southard were forced to make developer-driven concessions (more homes per acre, for instance) to satisfy their creditor, Pomona College, in order to maximize Pomona's value in the land and to ease the eventual sale of the property.

Really, Pomona College, together with Centex and the city of Claremont, are responsible for the paving over of Chicken Creek, an area that had a much higher ecological significance in terms of native plant and animal life than Johnson's Pasture. Many of the folks at the Claremont Wildlands Conservancy, which includes a good number of employees from the Claremont Colleges, ignore this part of the history of the land when they rail against developers.

The other forgotten part of this episode is that Southard had to scramble around to put together the money lost in his failed development scheme, and he borrowed that money from the city's sewer fund with the promise that it would be paid back. There's still some debate in some circles in town as to whether or not that promise was ever kept.

Like a lot of Claremont stories, things got muddled with time. The 400 always points to Centex's Stone Canyon Preserve, which destroyed the Chicken Creek riparian habitat, and says that was the price we had to pay to get the Wilderness Park. It's a pleasant fiction, but it's far from the whole story.

The 400's axiom still holds true: wait long enough, and a lie becomes a truth. Oh, and no need to dedicate a plaque to this one. No word on how this affects Claremont's 5th Best Place to Live status.

So here we are again. This time it's individual homeowners, rather than the city of Claremont, who've overextended themselves at the risk of their investment. People (and cities) never learn that there is a law of gravity to markets. We want to believe things go ever upward, but then reality hits.

Chalk it up to the price of forgetting history. We're feeling that downward pull again, to no one's, and to everyone's, surprise.

Expedition to Johnson's Pasture

An Alliterative Adventure

The planned parking prohibition on the upper streets of Claraboya (Klar-A-boya in the indigenous language) is reminiscent of the decades-ago closure by the Chinese of the direct route through Tibet to Mount Everest, forcing climbers to make a lengthy approach through Nepal.

Now, the City of Claremont, headed by Politburo Chief Peter Sunway Yao (Chairman Yao) will likely close off the routes for the most direct ascent to Johnson's Pasture. This has the nature-loving world scrambling. How will they get to Johnson's Pasture without aerobic effort? What will happen to the formerly-clandestine moonlight hikes? Where will the founding members of the Claremont Wildlands Conservancy conduct their private and mystic rituals?

Heretofore, intrepid mountaineers would approach Johnson's Pasture via the direct-aid route up the South Wall to the South Col. The primitive road system of Klar-A-boya would provide a steep but usually-reliable path where the teams could park their Land Rovers for the final pitch to the Col.

Click on Image to Enlarge

Now, however, mountaineers will have to establish Base Camp in the flatlands and make a long, dry approach march up the mighty Cobal, fording many rivers, before switching back and edging along the exposed and precipitous slopes hurtling to the depths of Suzanne's Couloir. After the "Long Traverse", Camp One is established on the divide between Suzanne's Couloir and Burbank Canyon.

From Camp One, a steep route grades inexorably upward ever upward to the knife-edge ridge and High Camp and a well-earned rest. Many is the climber reaching this point who has said, "I've had enough!" and turned back to comfort and safety.

But our Johnson's Pasture explorers are made of sterner stuff, and they proceed generally south along the ridge keeping the mighty East Buttress to the left, before coming out in the verdant mead of exotic grasses dotted with loden stands of non-native trees that is Johnson's Pasture.

A wonderful view is the traveler's reward. Don't forget to see Chi Cwm in the southeast corner of the pasture. While you are there, be sure to regard Worley's Waterway, tumbling downward ever downward from Johnson's Pasture to the east and south, and in season watering Thompson Creek Concrete Drainage Ditch amid a spray of debris and trash. The Geographer in our group may point out that the South Chute drains much of Johnson's Pasture along the west edge of Klar-A-boya and waters--well--it waters the same Thompson Creek Concrete Drainage Ditch but further downstream, near the corner of Webb School. These waters remain safely in concrete, adding nothing to the water table, until being deposited in the San Gabriel River above Whittier Narrows. A little of the water falling on the far west of Johnson's Pasture makes its way into Live Oak Canyon where it does its small part to enhance the water supply--of La Verne.

The fortunate wanderer may catch a glimpse at the first dagger of dawn, or as the sun softly sets, of the down- and fleece-clad she-priests of the Conservancy leading a small group to the highest hill of the Pasture. There, where the coarse grass lays down before the wind, we see a pillar of dust rise on the gray breeze and the soul of some departed solves silently into the firmament.

We quietly follow the narrow tread back to High Camp, reflecting on these many matters.

The trail down to Base Camp can normally be made by a healthy person in less than a day, and it is with a heavy heart but with keen anticipation of another trek that we leave this natural Paradise, having seen many Wonderful Things.