Government Must Act on Housing Concerns
People who paint Orange County residents politically conservative to blend in with the area’s right-of-center reputation must have been surprised by the results of a recent Times poll on housing.
According to the survey, most residents strongly support rent control and government intervention to require developers to build affordable housing. They also are acutely aware of, and sympathetic to, the problems of the homeless.
Those attitudes of residents have little to do with ideology and everything to do with the future of the county for now and for generations to come. They are reasonable reactions to the rapidly rising rents and land values and to well-grounded fears that the county is on its way to becoming a haven for only the rich.
Rents and home prices are expected to keep rising to a point so high that most children growing up here now will be forced to live elsewhere as adults because they will not be able to afford county housing prices.
That sobering realization, shared by 84% of the people polled, is an overriding factor in mellowing Orange County’s attitudes toward housing.
Only 20% of today’s residents can afford the $211,038 median price of an existing home. That fact not only works against people who want to buy homes, but it can hit hard at the county’s economic health.
High housing costs discourage some businesses from settling here and prompt others to move or expand elsewhere. Evidence of that was seen in the recent announcement from Weiser Lock Co., one of the county’s larger firms, that it will phase out its Huntington Beach operation and lay off about 1,100 employees.
Like Weiser Lock, many Orange County manufacturers have complained that it is difficult to find workers without raising salaries to compensate for the high housing costs, and the higher salaries make it more difficult for companies to stay competitive.
The new public attitudes that surfaced in The Times housing poll are realities that local officials and the private sector can no longer ignore. More affordable housing must be provided. Government can be directly involved by enacting zoning programs that require developers to build a certain amount of affordable homes in each development.
It can also help provide low-interest loans to help people raise the money needed to get into rental units. And it can change land-use laws to allow affordable housing in commercial and industrial areas and ease density restrictions so that smaller houses, condos and rentals can be built.
As The Times housing poll shows, the realization that high housing costs may keep today’s children from being able to afford homes in the county in which they were born and raised has caused many residents to change their thinking. It must have the same impact on builders and public officials too.
