Housing Needs Unmet in O.C.?

By Dave McKibben and Daniel Yi

July 26, 2004 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writers

Lance MacLean considers himself one of the lucky ones. The UC Irvine administrator bought his four-bedroom house in Mission Viejo a decade ago, before the recent real estate market boom sent Orange County home prices soaring to the highest levels in the region.

“If I had to be in the market to buy my house today, I couldn’t live in Mission Viejo,” said MacLean, a city councilman. “All you have to do is look at the median home price today, and that will tell you how badly we need affordable housing.”

But MacLean was in the minority earlier this year when the South County city rejected a 168-unit apartment project for low- and modest-income families called Aliso Ridge. Scores of residents flooded Planning Commission and City Council meetings to oppose the plan, saying it would bring blight and traffic woes to their neighborhoods.

A few months later and about 10 miles away, San Juan Capistrano rejected a 60-unit low-cost housing plan after residents voiced similar complaints.

The two cases, say low-cost-housing advocates, underscore the need and the challenges of building such homes in Orange County, where the median home price peaked at $543,000 in May. “The market is supposed to produce housing that people are demanding,” said Victoria Basolo, assistant professor of planning, policy and design at UCI. “But that’s just not happening.”

What is happening in Orange County is a combination of an exploding population, changing demographics, skewed development trends and a persistent suburban self-image, Basolo and other experts say.

The issue is particularly glaring in South County, where single-family homes dominate the master-planned landscape and many residents apparently equate cheaper, higher-density housing with urban chaos.

“By their nature, high-density, low-income projects have high crime rates, more vandalism, more gang presence, more parking impact, more loads on our sewers and place more demand on police and fire services and our school districts,” Mission Viejo resident Don Wilder said to city commissioners during a January meeting where about 100 people showed up to oppose Aliso Ridge.

But high density is already a reality in Orange County, housing experts say, with families doubling up and tripling up in converted garages and single-bedroom apartments in cities such as Anaheim, Garden Grove and Santa Ana. Many are moving to cheaper housing in the Inland Empire or north San Diego County.

Orange County, one of the region’s smallest in area, has 3,600-plus residents per square mile, according to the 2000 census, compared with 670 people per square mile in San Diego County and 2,300 per square mile in Los Angeles County.

And the population is increasingly diverse along economic lines, from service-sector wage earners to mid-income professionals to corporate millionaires.

Still, housing development has shrunk and remained largely homogeneous. In 2001, Orange County issued building permits for 8,585 units, 3,943 fewer than the year before, said Basolo, citing U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development figures.

What’s more alarming, Basolo and low-cost-housing advocates say, is that the overwhelming majority of what is being built is costlier single-family homes: 6,061 in 2001 compared with 2,524 condo and apartment units. A typical Orange County house costs about $200,000 more than an average condominium.

“The ownership market in Orange County, for all practical purposes, does not exist for middle- and low-income families,” said Scott Darrell, executive director of the Kennedy Commission, a low-cost-housing advocacy group. “There is no range of homes being built. It is mostly high end, and that doesn’t trickle down very far.”

Katharine Hendrickson, a fifth-grade teacher in San Juan Capistrano, earns $70,000 a year but she said she couldn’t afford to live in Orange County.

After hunting for small houses and condos in South County, she bought a small, three-bedroom house in Oceanside last year for $242,000.

“It’s frustrating,” she said. “I basically have my foot in two different worlds. My doctor is up here in Orange County, my dentist is down there. My hairdresser is in Vista, my mechanic is up there.”

The lack of low-cost units for sale has put pressure on rentals as well. The rental vacancy rate in the county was 3%, according to the 2000 U.S. census, the lowest in the region. And the demand is overwhelming.

Mendocino Apartments, a year-old project in the master-planned community of Talega in San Clemente, has 186 government-subsidized units for rent. The waiting list is four times that number.

“There’s no job I could get at this point in my life that would pay for any home in this market,” said Mendocino resident Ida Ashley, 52, who earns $7.95 an hour as a supermarket clerk.

Ashley was evicted from a San Clemente apartment in November because she couldn’t pay her rent. At the Mendocino, she pays $533 a month for a three-bedroom unit that she shares with her three children.

The family can enjoy the complex’s well-manicured grounds, barbecue areas, a community swimming pool, basketball and volleyball courts, and an after-school learning center with computers, tutoring and crafts.

Some homeowners who live near the apartment complex said they didn’t realize it was low-cost housing.

“As long as it’s well-managed,” said Mary Todd, a Talega resident whose house overlooks Mendocino, “I don’t have a problem with it.”

At Tustin Field, a master-planned development now under construction at the closed Tustin Marine base, low-cost units are going up alongside market-rate housing.

Developer John Laing Homes is building 140 townhomes, 70 of which will be sold to low- and moderate-income families at discounted prices, thanks to land subsidies from the city of Tustin. The subsidized units, which are called Level Ones, are selling for about $75,000.

“When they told me ‘You qualify for Level One,’ I was so happy. I didn’t know what Level One was, but it is my home,” said Laura Medina, 38, a cook at a Garden Grove school, whose family rents a two-bedroom trailer in Santa Ana.

Medina and her husband, Victor, a truck driver, expect to make $25,000 to $27,000 this year, she said. The family had given up on the idea of homeownership. Their Level One home is a two-bedroom, 1,225-square-foot townhouse, which will be ready in January.

Their neighbors will include residents of 70 nonsubsidized, slightly larger units, which are selling for more than $500,000. The two types of homes are meant to blend seamlessly.

“We didn’t want people to look at the homes and say ‘Oh, those are the affordable units,’ ” said Marianne Browne, vice president of sales and marketing for John Laing Homes.

Not all low-cost housing projects can be inconspicuous, however, the advocates say. Because the demand is so great, future housing will have to include large apartment complexes.

“We have to build more units,” said Darrell, of the Kennedy Commission. “It’s really that simple.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Low-cost housing

Low-cost developments serve families earning 30% to 60% of the area median income. For Orange County, this is an annual gross income of $22,700 to $45,360 for a family of four.

Selected jobs in the county that fall within this range:

Physical therapist assistant:$43,254

Exec. secretary and admin. assistant:$40,948

Licensed practical/vocational nurse:$40,074

Parking enforcement:$37,603

Highway maintenance:$35,435

Law clerk:$35,266

Tailor/dressmaker/custom sewer:$33,903

Roofer:$33,517

Bus driver (transit and intercity):$31,985

Dental lab technician:$31,764

Tire repairer and changer:$30,906