“It’s going to provide an incentive for large-scale housing developments in the county, which we have not seen over the years,” Wanda Williams, the county’s assistant planning director, told the board.

But the shift touched off a debate among supervisors about how best to fund affordable housing after the statewide loss of redevelopment agencies, once the primary force behind new affordable housing.

The move was championed by Supervisor Ellen Pirie, who represents Aptos and is retiring from politics in a few months. She has said one of her goals is to push the Aptos Village plan through.

“The last thing we want is an affordable housing ordinance that actually inhibits affordable housing,” Pirie said.

Under the county’s voter-approved 1978 Measure J affordable housing program, roughly 15 percent of new units are set aside of low- and moderate-income homeowners, providing one path to homeownership in a county where housing prices remain sky high.

Rather than sell the units, the changes approved Tuesday allow the developer to rent them out for up to seven-and-a-half years, at which point they would be sold as affordable housing or at market rates, if the developer pays a substantial fee.

That last provision caused much of the debate, with the board eventually voting that it would have final say over any developer’s decision to pay the “in lieu” fee.

“I’m concerned that if we allow that, we’re going to have more units that fall outside the affordable housing stock,” Supervisor Mark Stone said.

That option is available to developers, who pay a sliding scale fee based on the value of a home. For example, a home valued at $500,000 would trigger a 40 percent fee, or $200,000.

Those funds go toward building affordable housing. For example, they were recently plowed into Santa Cruz’ Nuevo Sol Apartments, which serves the chronically homeless.

But they have also been used to helped fund programs aimed at vulnerable populations, and county staff praised their value. Because they are flexible, they can be used as matching funds to help secure state and federal grants, for example.

“I think in terms of the overall program it’s a real benefit to have those resources,” county administrator Susan Mauriello said.

The Aptos Village Project is targeted for an undeveloped swath behind the Bayview Hotel. It includes a mixed-use village, more than 60 housing units, new roads and the relocation of the old apple barn.

The project is being developed by Barry Swenson Builder. A representative could not be reached to comment.

Roy Johnson, 79, recently lost the home he built 48 years earlier in Georgia to foreclosure. Older Americans are increasingly facing this problem.

MABLETON, Ga. — Roy Johnson fell so far behind on his $1,000-per-month mortgage payments that last year he allowed the redbrick, three-bedroom ranch he had owned since 1963 to lapse into foreclosure.

“I couldn’t pay it any longer,” he said. “One day, I woke up and said, ‘Hell, I’m through with it. I’m walking away from the house.’ ”

That decision swept Mr. Johnson, 79, into a rapidly expanding demographic: older Americans who have lost their homes in the Great Recession. As he hauled his belongings by pickup truck from this Atlanta suburb and moved into his daughter’s basement, Mr. Johnson became one of the one and a half million Americans over the age of 50 who lost their houses to foreclosure between 2007 and 2011. Of those, the highest foreclosure rate was for homeowners over 75.

Once viewed as the most fiscally stable age group, older people are flailing. On Wednesday, AARP released what it described as the most comprehensive analysis yet of why the foreclosure crisis struck so many Americans in their retirement years. The report found that while people under 50 are the group most likely to face foreclosure, the risk of “serious delinquency” on mortgages has grown fastest for people over 50.

While the study classified even baby boomers as “older Americans,” its most dire findings were for the oldest group. Among people over 75, the foreclosure rate grew more than eightfold from 2007 to 2011, to 3 percent of that group of homeowners, the report found.

“Despite the perception that older Americans are more housing secure than younger people, millions of older Americans are carrying more mortgage debt than ever before, and more than three million are at risk of losing their homes,” the report found. “As the mortgage crisis continues, millions of older Americans are struggling to maintain their financial security.”

The report was based on nationwide loan data that covered a five-year span. The profile of those facing foreclosure has changed since 2007. As the average age and wealth of those people rise, their foreclosures are less likely to involve high-interest loans. In fact, most foreclosures are now the result of prime loans rather than subprime ones, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Instead, older Americans are losing their homes because of pension cuts, rising medical costs, shrinking stock portfolios and falling property values, according to Debra Whitman, AARP’s executive vice president for policy. They are also not saving enough money. Half of households whose head is between 65 and 74 have no money in retirement accounts, according to the Federal Reserve.

At CredAbility, an Atlanta-based credit counseling agency, the average age of callers needing help has risen to 49 from 43 in recent years. Scott Scredon, a spokesman for the agency, said most older Americans facing foreclosure are frugal but are unable to live on fixed incomes with the rising cost of living.

“When we think of foreclosures, we think of someone who was a little reckless and spent beyond their means,” he said. “The older the person, the less likely that is to be the case.”

Foreclosures create unique challenges for older people, Ms. Whitman said. They are less able to find new jobs and more vulnerable to becoming homeless, analysts say.

In Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Charlotte Orton’s three-bedroom apartment has been under foreclosure for four months. Since losing her job as a real estate agent, Ms. Orton’s only source of income has been Social Security payments of $1,200 per month.

If she is evicted, Ms. Orton, 69, who has no family members in Florida, says she does not know where she will live.

“This is the lowest point in my entire life,” she said. “If I were in my 30s, it would be easier to get employment. But all they want to know is what your recent experience is, and the real estate market has collapsed.”

Other older foreclosure victims have managed to negotiate with banks to stay in their houses. Josephine Tolbert, 76, was temporarily evicted from her house in San Francisco for two weeks. Protesters from the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment staged a sit-in at Bank of America, and eventually Ms. Tolbert was able to renegotiate her loan.

“At my age, I don’t know what I would have done,” she said. “But let me tell you, it was a fight.”

Selling houses is also a challenge for many older people. The value of real estate has collapsed, especially in wealthy suburbs of Atlanta, Dallas, Chicago and other sprawling metropolitan areas.

For Mr. Johnson, it was painful to watch the house he built 48 years earlier sell for only $33,000 at auction last year.

Now he lives in what his 55-year-old daughter calls his “man cave” in her basement. It is an hour away from his old house. Although Mr. Johnson is grateful to have been helped by a relative, he misses having space for all of his belongings and the tree from which he made pear preserves.

“I planned to die in that house,” he said. “But I guess it won’t work out that way.”

Two bills to protect all California homeowners from arbitrary foreclosures and loan fraud are headed to Gov. Jerry Brown following their passage Monday in the Assembly and Senate.

The bills — part of Attorney General Kamala Harris’ Homeowner Bill of Rights — would make California the first state to extend to all homeowners the provisions of a national mortgage settlement with five big lenders.

“We really got it right this time,” said Assemblyman Mike Eng, D-Alhambra, who helped pilot the bills through the Assembly. “It means more Californians will stay in their homes, and the California economy will be better for that.”

The vote passing the bills was 53-25 in the Assembly and 25-13 in the Senate.

The measures address one of the most vexing problems faced by struggling homeowners seeking to remain in their homes — sudden foreclosure while they are working with a lender on a loan modification. The legislation also tackles a common complaint from homeowners, who say they are shuttled from one bank officer to the next in a confusing process that requires the repeated submissions of documents.

The foreclosure crisis continues to roil the state. More than 600,000 homeowners are either not making their mortgage payments or are facing foreclosure, according to ForeclosureRadar. Banks currently own 75,000 foreclosed homes.

If signed by Brown, the Foreclosure Reduction Act and the Due Process Rights Act will require lenders and

servicers to:

–Decide on a loan modification application before beginning to foreclose on a home. This would end “dual tracking,” in which one department in a bank works on a loan modification while another initiates a foreclosure.

–Establish a “single point of contact” at a bank for borrowers who might be eligible for a loan modification. The point of contact would have to be knowledgeable about the borrower’s loan and personal circumstances.

The bills also give borrowers the right to sue before being foreclosed, and to recover damages following a sale, a provision the banking industry felt was too broad.

In addition, the legislation also imposes a $7,500 civil penalty per loan when the lender has filed unverified documents — a practice known as “robo-signing.”

“Passing these key elements of the Homeowner Bill of Rights represents a significant step forward for struggling homeowners,” Harris said in a statement. “These common-sense reforms will require banks to treat California homeowners more fairly and bring more transparency and accountability to their practices in our state. Responsible homeowners will have a better shot to keep their homes.”

The measures would have helped Jose and Maria Carrillo of San Jose. Their three-bedroom home was sold at auction Jan. 10 after a two-year struggle to modify their mortgage with Bank of America. Maria’s sister, Ana Nunez, helped with the modification and said that it involved a long, frustrating process of submitting and resubmitting documents.

During that time a default notice was filed and the house was scheduled for sale. “We were told not to worry,” Nunez said. “But my sister and husband were at home Jan. 10 in the evening when two gentlemen showed up to tell them they had three days to move out of the house.” The men had purchased the home at auction that day.

Nunez said she called the bank officer who was dealing with their modification. “The lady who answered the phone was very apologetic.”

The Carrillos’ story has a happy ending, but many such stories don’t. The Fair Housing Law Project of San Jose took their case and persuaded the bank it had made a mistake. The foreclosure was canceled and the couple’s loan modified.

“It never should have gotten to this point,” said James Zahradka, one of the lawyers who handled the Carrillos’ case. “This wouldn’t have happened” if the Foreclosure Reduction Act bill had been law last year, said Zahradka, who is also a board member of the California Reinvestment Coalition.

Sen. Noreen Evans, D-Santa Rosa, who co-chaired a joint conference committee on the bills with Eng, said she expects the governor to sign the legislation. “We did work very closely with the governor’s advisers in crafting the final compromise,” she said.

The measures were passed despite opposition from the banking and mortgage industry, which fears that the Due Process Rights Act — giving borrowers the right to sue their lenders — will spur lawsuits and raise the cost of making loans.

More than half a dozen banking and financial industry groups in California fought the bills. The groups, including the California Chamber of Commerce, said the measures are “overly complicated” and are likely to “encourage frivolous litigation.”

“Numerous studies have shown that when you lengthen litigation and lengthen the foreclosure process there’s no tangible benefit to borrowers,” said Dustin Hobbs, spokesman for the California Mortgage Bankers Association. “It significantly delays the recovery of the real estate market.”

The intent is to reduce wrongful foreclosures, but not all foreclosures, said Paul Leonard of the Center for Responsible Lending.

“There are 700,000 Californians who are today in some stage of delinquency or in foreclosure,” Leonard said. “There’s a large number of folks who could benefit from the protections that are included in the bill.”

Unlike the national settlement, which expires in three years, these laws are permanent, except for some provisions that sunset in 2018. The laws would go into effect Jan. 1.