23.3% Boost in Housing Units May Be Needed in Next 5 Years

If current employment trends continue, Orange County will need to increase housing by 23.3% to nearly 1 million units by 1994, a new study by the Southern California Assn. of Governments concludes.

If the present total of more than 800,000 housing units does not increase at that pace, jobholders will commute longer distances to homes elsewhere, further worsening the county’s already serious transportation and air pollution problems, the report indicates.

However, the report also cited regional growth-management policies as a way to alleviate some of the need for added housing.

A 23.3% increase by 1994 means new-home construction in the county would have to increase at an annual rate of 3.1%--much higher than the 2% annual rate between 1980 and 1987--to keep up with the demand for housing.

The housing projections assume that during the next five years there will be a shift of 360,000 jobs within the six-county Southern California region from areas that have too many jobs to areas that don’t have enough. The figures also assume a diversion of about 150,000 new housing units within the six-county region to sites closer to future jobs, through cooperation between cities and counties.

SCAG is a regional planning agency that includes representatives from Orange, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura and Imperial counties.

Orange County officials immediately branded SCAG’s numbers as outrageously high.

“These projections are absurd,” said Orange County Supervisor Roger R. Stanton. “This is in the mold of SCAG projections in the past, which have always been high. If anything, the county would be trimming back. And the county’s residents certainly don’t want that kind of growth to occur. If you look at the county’s (development) approval procedures, I don’t think it’s possible for the county to go to that rate of growth.”

Based on SCAG’s data, Irvine would have to post a 48.7% increase in dwelling units in order to meet its 1994 housing needs because it is generating so many jobs as a major hub of office and light industrial employment. Yorba Linda would have to absorb a 34.7% increase, and San Clemente would need 32.1% more units. On the low side, La Habra would need only 2.2% more housing and Seal Beach 7%.

According to SCAG’s figures, unincorporated areas of Orange County would have to absorb a 57.8% increase in the number of housing units to meet 1994 needs. Much of the unincorporated areas are in largely undeveloped southern and eastern Orange County.

All cities in Orange County combined would have to absorb a 16.3% rate of housing growth. (Those figures, however, exclude Mission Viejo, which did not become a city until last week, long after the figures were compiled.)

But of the total number of new housing units projected for the entire county, cities are expected to absorb 59.2% of them.

Officials from the cities were not immediately available for comment.

Mark Pisano, SCAG’s executive director, defended the figures as having been based on input from county administrative staff members, officials from the cities, analyses of historical trends and current land-use policies. Pisano said Orange County administrators believe that there will be 350,000 fewer jobs than SCAG is projecting for the year 2010 and 200,000 fewer people.

SCAG President Don Griffin, a Buena Park city councilman, cautioned that the housing figures are preliminary and are almost always negotiated downward during a series of meetings that follow their release.

“I certainly feel that the numbers for Orange County will require some verification. . . . I want to be assured as to where those numbers come from,” Griffin said.

John Withers, director of government relations for the Orange County Building Industry Assn., said SCAG’s projections clearly show that due to extremely high demand and skyrocketing developer fees, “it’s becoming more and more difficult to find starter homes for middle-income people (in Orange County), let alone those with lower incomes.”

Gregory Hile, a key backer of the slow-growth initiative on the June 7 Orange County ballot, said he would not comment on the SCAG report until he has more time to study it.

SCAG officials said the timing of the housing allocation report was coincidental and had nothing to do with the county’s slow-growth ballot measure.

A county-by-county breakdown of projected job shifts to places such as Riverside and San Bernardino was not available Wednesday, nor were figures showing what the county’s housing needs would be without such shifts.

Even with such changes, the county would need 995,037 housing units by July, 1994, according to the SCAG report--an increase of 188,295 dwelling units over the 806,742 units that existed Jan. 1, 1987.

However, other “growth management” choices identified by SCAG could change those housing projections dramatically.

For example, by reducing population growth through locally adopted management plans, as has occurred already in some communities, growth could be forced to go elsewhere, according to one possibility examined by SCAG. This would require only 86,801 new housing units in Orange County by July, 1994.

Adopting SCAG’s “emerging futures” strategy--in which more people work at home or remote job sites using personal computers and “fax” machines--would still result in a need for 112,235 new housing units by 1994, the study concludes.

“Los Angeles and Orange County will have slower growth rates in the next few years, but they will continue to have significant housing problems,” Pisano said. “During the next few months, we will be circulating these preliminary drafts of housing allocations and hold workshops to discuss each of these alternative futures. . . . The goal is to have a regional growth-management plan sometime in September.”

SCAG researchers developed specific housing estimates for each county and city as part of an effort to come up with the master growth plan. The housing projections, known as “allocations,” are required by state law every five years. State law also empowers the California Department of Housing and Community Development to seek sanctions against communities that have ignored unmet housing needs.

The SCAG housing allocations will be discussed at a series of public workshops during the next few months, along with suggested growth-management options for meeting transportation, air quality and housing needs.

The first workshop in the “Choices for Action” program is scheduled for Wednesday in Ventura. A meeting is scheduled for May 7 in Orange County.