Low-Income Renters Feel Pinch in O.C.

One day, Nancy Cornell vows, she will no longer sleep in her living room. Her three young children will not share a single bedroom. And she will move that chest of drawers out of her cluttered kitchen.

A single mother who attends college full time and works 40 hours a week, Cornell says she cannot pay more in rent than she does now: $550 a month for a one-bedroom apartment in a tough neighborhood here. Her apartment is crowded, her neighbors fight and her kids complain because she won’t let them play outside.

“With the rent, the electricity, the baby-sitter and the laundry, it takes almost everything I have,” said Cornell, 30, who receives some welfare and food stamp payments, and help from the father of one of her children, in addition to the paychecks she earns as a clerk at Kmart. “I hate this place, but I don’t have a choice. The rents around here are just outrageous.”

Trapped by her low income and the county’s high cost of housing, Cornell is among thousands of needy Orange County residents who live in overcrowded or substandard apartments, or who pay substantially more than they can afford in rent. The Stanton woman, who earns $5.65 an hour, has waited more than four years for an opening in a county program that distributes federal rent subsidies.

In some ways, Cornell is more fortunate than many. She applied for a federal Section 8 subsidy in September 1991, before the Orange County Housing Authority closed the waiting list for the popular program. As a result, she expects to begin receiving help with her rent payments within the next few months.

Advocates for the county’s neediest residents have praised government officials for an announcement recently that they will soon again accept applications for the rent subsidy program.

But the county housing authority’s pledge to open--for just two weeks--a list that has been closed for more than four years also spotlights a chronic, and, some say, worsening problem: a shortage of low-income housing that has reached crisis proportions.

“On a scale of 1 to 10, it’s a 20,” said Tim Shaw, executive director of the Orange County Homeless Issues Task Force. “We have the fifth most populous urban area in the nation, and less than 4% of the housing on the market rents for under $500 a month. We’re falling further and further behind.”

The reasons for the shortage, called the worst in the U.S. in a recent study, include the high costs of land and construction in Orange County, as well as regulatory barriers that create delays and increase expenditures.

But the most significant obstacles are more insidious, housing advocates and some government officials say: the often heated opposition of Orange County residents to affordable-housing projects in their neighborhoods and a reluctance by local officials to press the issue because of the political negatives it carries.

“You want to know the main reason we have this problem in Orange County?” asked Dhongchai Pusavat, the county’s housing and redevelopment director. “It’s the NIMBY reason--Not In My Back Yard.”

According to the most recent state figures, more than $26 million designated for low-income housing goes unspent in city redevelopment accounts across the county.

“The mind-set of the local elected official is ‘What else can we do with this money, other than creating affordable housing?’ ” said Allen Baldwin, who heads the nonprofit Orange County Community Housing Corp. in Santa Ana. “But it’s really the citizens’ fault.”

Some city officials contend the numbers are out of date and have changed markedly with recent spending on low-cost housing. But advocates for the poor and homeless in Orange County say needy residents have few alternatives for help with their housing.

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Unlike many of the nation’s older urban areas, the county has no public housing at all. The Housing Authority’s waiting list for federal rent subsidies, which will open from March 1 to March 15, has been closed since November 1991. And many, such as Cornell, who are now at or near the top of the list, first asked for help nearly five years ago.

“I thought it would be like two years,” said Cornell, who leaves for school at 9:30 most mornings, returning more than 12 hours later after her work shift ends and she has picked up her children at the baby-sitter’s.

“Then about a year and a half ago, they told me it wouldn’t be too much longer. I just can’t wait to get [the subsidy]. We’re so crowded in here, and it’s so cluttered.”

The Section 8 program provides rent subsidies for households earning less than half their community’s median annual income, or $29,500 a year for a family of four in Orange County.

Those who qualify pay no more than 30% of their annual incomes in rent, with the federal government paying the rest, up to a limit set by fair market rent guidelines for each community.

The backlog for subsidies stood at more than 13,000 people when the list was closed in 1991. The decision was an attempt to keep from raising expectations that could not be met in any reasonable amount of time, Pusavat said.

But with the list now trimmed to about 1,000 people, housing officials say they will be ready to accept new applications next month. Officials expect a huge turnout for the rare opportunity to secure a rent subsidy.

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Those in need of low-cost housing include preschool teachers, truck drivers, baby-sitters, fast-food workers and others who toil at low-income jobs. Despite its need for such workers, Orange County has the nation’s most acute shortage of affordable housing.

According to a 1995 study by the Washington-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the county has more than five times as many low-income renters as there are apartments they can afford. The study analyzed data from 1988-92.

Although the number of people affected by housing shortages is higher for areas with larger populations, such as Los Angeles County, the ratio of need to supply is highest here, the study showed.

The study, which analyzed housing data from the nation’s 44 largest metropolitan areas, also found that 76% of Orange County’s poor spend 50% or more of their income on rent.

Such a situation, where more than 30% of household income goes for rent, creates a “housing burden” in which there is likely to be too little left over to pay for other necessary expenses, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

In 1994, the most recent year for which statistics were available, the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Orange County was $781, according to the Orange County Apartment Assn. For a three-bedroom unit, the average stood at $992.

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Pusavat, the county official, said he knows that housing for the poorest residents is in terribly short supply. He takes pride, though, that during the last two years, his agency has helped develop 1,800 privately owned apartments that rent for about $450 a month each.

“We feel it’s a great success that we’ve been able to do that,” he said. “We are trying to do as much as we can.”

Housing advocates say the problems created by the shortage go well beyond the hardships endured by the county’s neediest residents, ultimately affecting the rest of the community.

“It gives rise to so many other problems: homelessness, overcrowding and problems associated with drugs, gangs and disease control,” Shaw said. “And when people can’t afford to live near their work, they’re forced to commute long distances. And that creates pollution problems. We’re all affected.”

No one feels the pinch as much as those forced to live in substandard, overcrowded housing, such as the family of six crowded into a cramped, one-bedroom apartment in Costa Mesa. The apartment’s only bed is occupied at night by the family’s three boys, ages 9, 6 and 5. The adults and their 1-year-old daughter sleep on the living room floor.

“This is not a good place for my family,” the father said, asking that he not be named because he is embarrassed by his situation. “But I pay $600 for this already and I can’t afford anything better.”

The man, who works 40 hours a week in a paint factory, said his family also receives some welfare assistance and food stamps. Someday, he said, he hopes to earn enough to get his family off welfare and move them into a larger apartment, one where his children will not have to share a bed or sleep on the floor.

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Opponents of low-cost apartments built near their homes often fear the housing will result in lower property values, more congestion, an increase in crime and a need for new infrastructure, such as schools and roads.

Some, such as Irvine resident John Kleinpeter, who spoke against a proposed project at an Irvine City Council meeting last year, say they actually favor affordable housing in general, but oppose its concentration near their homes.

“We want affordable housing,” Kleinpeter said. “But not this way.”

Kleinpeter was among about 200 angry homeowners who descended on City Council chambers last October to argue that a proposed development would unfairly concentrate low-income housing in their Westpark neighborhood.

“I have never been opposed to affordable housing,” Kleinpeter said. “The reason we spoke in opposition to this project was that it was being done in a way that would segregate very low-income residents into a substandard project.”

He and other residents argued that 42% of the city’s low-income housing projects were within a mile of the site for the 84-unit development. But council members approved it, following the advice of the city attorney.

Santa Ana community activist Debbie McEwen said she understands the concerns of residents like Kleinpeter. McEwen says she can see the ill effects of low-income housing on her neighborhood in Santa Ana’s Historic French Park District.

“Affordable housing is what destroys whole communities and neighborhoods,” said McEwen, president of the Historic French Park Homeowners Assn. “When it’s run by a for-profit enterprise, there’s never enough money coming in to keep it up, so it’s always shoddy and in disrepair. We resent it and we hate it.”

McEwen said she believes low-income housing should have a place in her neighborhood and others, but contended it tends to be concentrated in certain areas. “We have it heaped and piled on top of us in this neighborhood and it brings down the community.”

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Orange County defines affordable housing as dwellings within the means of households earning up to 120% of the county’s median family income, which is $51,167 a year. Households earning up to almost $62,000 a year are considered eligible for some types of affordable housing.

In its report released last summer, the state Department of Housing and Community Development found that $26.06 million remained unused in the coffers of 12 city redevelopment agencies in fiscal 1993-1994, the latest statistics available. The agencies are required to set aside 20% of locally generated property taxes to pay for the construction or rehabilitation of housing for low- and moderate-income residents.

Statewide, about $297 million went unspent by municipal redevelopment agencies in the same year, the report showed. The figures reflect the most recent accounting of money spent by redevelopment agencies in California, according to department spokesman John Frith. A review of agency accounts for 1994-95 will be published this summer, he said.

According to the report, nearly $12 million was available to the city of Orange that year for affordable housing, the most of any Orange County agency. The Anaheim Redevelopment Agency had nearly $3.5 million, the second highest balance during the period.

Officials in both cities, however, said the state statistics are out of date and do not reflect funds spent since then, or projects now underway.

Bertha Chavoya, Anaheim’s housing manager, said her city already has earmarked virtually all of its affordable-housing funds for the current year--about $3.3 million--for a variety of projects, including the acquisition and rehabilitation of about 200 units in the Romneya neighborhood.

Jack McGee, community development director for Orange, said about $1.5 million for low-cost housing is still available in that city, with the rest designated for several major affordable-housing projects under construction or in the planning stages. One is a $7.5-million project to rehabilitate the Villa Santiago apartments, a 260-unit complex on Prospect Street that will house low-income residents when it is completed in 1997.

“I think we’ve been very successful at providing some [affordable-housing] units and we hope to do more,” McGee said. “Obviously, it’s never enough.”

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Neighborhood opposition often makes spending such money more difficult than it might appear, McGee said. Of all low-income projects, he said, multiple-unit housing for families tends to arouse the most community resistance, while apartments for seniors encounter the least.

But neighbors near the Villa Santiago project have been very supportive, partly because the apartments there were in poor condition before the rehabilitation, McGee said.

“I don’t advise that as a strategy, mind you, but it certainly helped in this instance,” he said. “It was very overcrowded, people were loitering around there and there were a lot of neighborhood problems. The neighbors were desperate to get something done.”

More often, though, Orange County residents tend to fight affordable-housing projects, expressing fears that the planned units will increase crime and other social problems in their neighborhoods and cause the value of adjacent properties to plummet.

“People have this imagery that affordable housing translates to high-rise tenements that will attract crime and vandalism to their neighborhoods,” said Brea City Manager Frank Benest, whose city has won praise for its low-income housing program. “They think it’s for ‘them,’ those other people who aren’t like us. But that’s not the case.”

Benest said developing affordable housing has become a major commitment for Brea officials and is seen as a key part of the city’s economic strategy.

“Businesses need certain assets in order to stay here, and one of them is housing for their employees,” he said. “We feel pretty passionate about it here.”

Times correspondent Russ Loar contributed to this report.