The High Cost of Living in O.C.

Huntington Beach resident Julia Latenche makes cleaning her living room floor an important weekly ritual, moving rhythmically from one white square tile to another with a hand brush, a toothbrush and a little cup holding a mixture of soap, water and bleach.

Latenche, 40, lives in a modest two-bedroom apartment but rents only a small portion of the living room floor, where she sleeps and for which she pays $240 a month. Nine people divide up the apartment, none able to afford the $740 total rent.

Her housing choice demonstrates a dark side of Southern California’s housing boom and prosperity.

Record housing sales and sharp increases in property values have proved a boon for homeowners. But the upswing has left working-class families--and even some middle-class ones--struggling to afford basic housing that people elsewhere have taken for granted.

Consider:

* In Santa Ana, Anaheim and elsewhere, cash-strapped families are renting out parts of apartments, portions of rooms and even garages, which have become makeshift homes to as many as 20 people.

* In more middle-class areas, white-collar professionals who can’t afford rents that average $1,000 a month share apartments with senior citizens and single parents. The pairings have created what experts describe as “pseudo-families,” in which the senior citizens become “grandparents” and the children of single parents become “siblings.”

* In Huntington Beach, code enforcement officials recently found a family living without any plumbing, using a garbage can as a toilet. Property owners in the area say the apartments are so crowded that men regularly urinate on the streets.

These scenarios, experts say, represent a worsening of what has long been Orange County’s top economic dilemma: a bounty of jobs that lure workers to the area but not enough affordable housing.

Rising real estate prices along with an influx of new residents have combined to boost Orange County’s population density over the last decade. In 1990, there were 2.87 people per household. In 1999, there are 3.04 people per household, a seemingly innocuous increase that experts say is actually a significant jump.

“Every city is dealing with increasing density,” said San Juan Capistrano building official Dan McFarland. “No one is building multiple family units. You have them and where there should be two families there are three. People are renting out garages, any space they can.”

Many cities report a jump in the number of complaints of possible code violations in residential areas, prompting increases in inspections. But as neighborhoods become more dense, some officials question how much longer they can keep up.

“As a city we have to say we can’t keep building because we can’t take care of folks,” said Pat Whitaker, Santa Ana housing manager. “We’ve always had large extended families in low-income areas. Any community can handle that. But when each one-bedroom means eight to 10 people, it becomes a community issue. . . . How can you keep up and provide a reasonable standard of service?”

And the affordable housing shortage shows no signs of easing.

This summer, the average apartment rent in Orange County smashed through the $1,000-a-month mark. Four low-income renters compete for every one low-cost apartment unit, the worst ratio of any metropolitan area in the nation, according to a study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington-based advocacy group.

Behind these numbers are the stories of people who are trying to keep a toehold in Orange County. They are not just low-income blue-collar workers. They are secretaries, white-collar workers, single moms, senior citizens, new parents and adult children trying to stay in a place they once thought would always be home.

Until last February, Latenche and her husband split the rent on a two-bedroom apartment in Huntington Beach with another couple from their native Puebla, Mexico. The place was crowded but tolerable. When the rent rose, from $650 to $800, Latenche moved in with her two adult sons and their families. They put two refrigerators in the kitchen to accommodate three families’ food. Latenche and her husband decided the two sons’ families needed privacy more than they did, so the older couple took the living room, adorned with inexpensive religious ornaments and a few chairs.

Dave Brees, an apartment owner and a member of the Oakview Property Owners Assn., said a similar story lies behind most doors in this neighborhood off Beach Boulevard.

Renters sublease the sala, which means living room in Spanish. But the term is a euphemism. The sublessor has rights to the room only when it is not used by the other tenants.

“We are going to see a lot more sala renters because costs are pushing up rental prices. For landlords, it’s a no-win situation. You raise the rent, you see more overcrowding,” Brees said.

The increasingly packed conditions in some neighborhoods strain resources. Children looking for an escape from crowded apartments turn sidewalks and streets into makeshift playgrounds, putting them in danger of being hit by a car.

Dense dwellings also place residents at increased risk during fires or other emergencies. Studies indicate that occupants of an overcrowded apartment need about two minutes longer to get out of a burning unit than residents of a normally occupied one. Santa Ana firefighter Jim Albers said this is because they must navigate extra furniture as well as one another.

There hasn’t been a major apartment fire blamed on density in recent years, but Albers fears it’s only a matter of time.

“We’re going to have more fires because we have more people,” he said.

That only makes things worse for those in desperate need of shelter. Everyone, everywhere is looking for deals, shortcuts and refuge.

Some renters have turned to motor homes. At the Anaheim R.V. Park, manager Jack Hillard said more families that can’t take yet another rent increase have sought refuge on a swath of cement just outside Disneyland.

One 48-year-old mother grimaces as she explains that her husband lost his job and subsequently their three-bedroom rental home in Riverside County and could only find work in Orange County where the rents were “sky-high.” So they used a $4,200 tax refund check to buy a 16-year-old, 42-foot-long trailer. A parking space costs them $350 a month. The only problem? They had to sell almost everything they owned to squeeze into it with their 17-year-old daughter.

At every price range, renters show up in droves wherever they perceive a deal.

Mike O’Callaghan, a 42-year-old account executive for a custom photo laboratory, recently advertised to rent two of the four bedrooms in his Huntington Beach house. The last time he ran the ad, three years ago, 15 people called. This year, he got 120 responses, including some offering more money than the $650 rent he asked for.

The real estate market is so hot that many renters find themselves in a Catch-22. They can find cheaper houses elsewhere in the region but not the plentiful supply of jobs Orange County’s vibrant economy offers. While 60,000 jobs were created in Orange County last year, only 10,000 new housing units came on the market.

Single mom Anita Harvey, a 36-year-old accountant, said she would leave Orange County if her son weren’t a high-school junior, wedded to his school and friends.

When she moved into her two-bedroom Anaheim apartment three years ago, it was tough enough to pay the $750 rent. By last April, the rent had jumped to $800. And in August, the landlord asked for $875, way more than she can afford with her $365 weekly take-home pay.

“My salary hasn’t gone up that much. I just don’t understand how they expect people to pay that kind of jump,” she said. “I’m just about paying a house note and I don’t even own a house.”

Harvey is considering whether to move to another apartment in Anaheim, change jobs or get a night job as a hotel receptionist earning $6 an hour.

She is annoyed that, instead of spending her free time with her son, she may instead be answering someone else’s telephones at a motel.

Some people have circumvented the strains of the market by sharing apartments. Their children share bedrooms and their dogs share bowls.

Single parents Debrah Rincon and Terri Moon paid high rents until they found each other through Sole Support, a single-parent organization that 10 months ago began a roommate match service. The organization advertises in newspapers in the Roommates Wanted section of the want ads and found heavy demand from people who can’t afford the skyrocketing rents.

Moon found Rincon just in time. Just after she bought a new car with monthly payments of $275, her rent jumped from $675 to $775.

Moon picked Rincon because she had a son close in age to hers. Not soon after, they found themselves eating dinner together on their patio, surrounded by tiki lamps.

They chat when they aren’t running around with their kids. They even discovered they both like disco music.

Their story resonates throughout roommate services from Los Angeles to the Bay Area.

“You are going to start seeing a lot of untraditional living situations in Orange County. It’s a sign of the economic times,” said David J. Cordero, director of public affairs for the Apartment Assn. of Orange County.

Social service agencies that match roommates once placed senior citizens with other older people. Now they get inquiries from young professionals eager to live with seniors.

The Orange County Area Agency on Aging calculated that six nonprofits in the county made 500 roommate matches in the fiscal year ending in June 1999. This fiscal year, the agency expects to make 900 matches.

On one recent day, the South County Senior Services Shared Housing Program in San Clemente saw people who might not have come to them before for housing help: a 33-year-old professional whose house-sitting duties were abruptly terminated; a 52-year-old woman laid off from an Irvine engineering firm; and a 36-year-old single mother with a baby who was looking for a grandmother figure in the home.

Competition for housing is soaring because the supply of affordably housing is so low. Local officials say they find building multiple-family housing politically unpopular. Residents, they say, favor small, single-family homes, but they are out of the reach of renters without nest eggs for down payments.

Real estate economist David Chapman argues that Proposition 13, the 1978 California initiative that froze property tax revenues, forces local governments to discourage multiple-family housing in favor of commercial construction. Housing brings in less revenue than large retailers. New residents mean more public money must be spent on schools, roads, police and fire safety.

Affordable housing developer Alan Baldwin says neither he nor seven other nonprofit builders have been able to build affordable housing in Orange County since 1990.

“No city wants to build housing for people who make $10 an hour,” he said.

Jill Dominguez, interim executive director of the Orange County Homeownership Alliance, is equally frustrated. She warns that if more affordable housing is not created, jobs could disappear.

“We get shot down by the communities, so the prices keep going up and up. At one point, our companies will leave and say, ‘We can find a better quality of life elsewhere,’ ” she said.

Adds Chapman, “It’s hard to convince people of the effects of this spiral because the good times are rolling.”

Indeed, many people are enjoying the county’s prosperity so much that they can’t complain about housing costs. Besides, they are too busy looking for personal solutions, even though they may just contribute to the overall problem.

Take Oscar Mendez, a father of three, who recently got a better job paying $25 an hour as a construction site manager. Mendez’s problem was that he would have to work in Newport Beach, far from his home in Riverside County where he previously earned $18 an hour.

So Mendez came up with an idea that housing experts say has become increasingly common.

Mendez, a Stanton native, learned that his Riverside County neighbor had a similar problem: new job, better money, but a commute that didn’t really make it worth the while.

Neither Mendez nor his neighbor could afford a $75,000 down payment for a house. So they decided to buy a house together in central Orange County. They were able to find a single-family home that had been already divided, albeit illegally, into two units.

The two friends pooled their resources to pay about $350,000 for the house. When they looked at the garage, they turned to each other immediately.

“We were both wondering if we could rent that out to cut our mortgage payments,” he said. “It’s that kind of thinking that helps you make it in Orange County.”

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* FAMILIES SQUEEZED OUT

The face of homelessness in the county is often that of working families unable to pay rent. B1

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House POOR: Orange County’s affordable housing crisis.

Today: Rising rents are forcing some Orange County residents turn to desperate measures, from renting out portions of living rooms to moving large families into garages.

Monday: New programs from Orange County business and non-profit groups try to increase the rate of home ownership, especially in low-income neighborhoods.