Anaheim Mayor Ashleigh Aitken wants her colleagues to consider mandating housing developers to construct affordable homes in their projects – something elected officials have long resisted in Orange County’s largest city.
“Prior councils have tried to tackle this issue, and have historically preferred a voluntary program. I just think the data shows that it has not been working,” Aitken said during Tuesday’s city council meeting.
“Even if we had a nominal policy, the data shows that we are leaving millions and millions of dollars on the table by not having an affordable housing policy.”
Aitken added no matter where she goes in the city, residents express concerns about the cost of housing in Anaheim – a city that has long struggled to produce homes for low income families.
On Tuesday, she called on staff to bring back a draft ordinance – known as inclusionary housing – for the council to discuss at a future workshop, along with other options that could help generate more affordable homes in Anaheim.
“It can provide the development community certainty knowing that they’re all going to be treated the same and it gives us flexibility to build affordable housing at different levels,” she said.
For example, if a developer is going to build 100 homes and the city has a 10% inclusionary housing ordinance, then 10 of those homes would have to be built for low-income families – a four-person household making less than $115,000 a year, according to the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development.
Or the developer can forgo the affordable homes and instead pay an in-lieu fee that helps city officials construct such housing elsewhere in the city.
Councilmembers Jose Diaz, Natalie Rubalcava and Natalie Meeks colleagues pushed back on creating this type of policy in Anaheim, saying it will prevent housing production.
“More fees, more regulations and more bureaucratic mandates will decrease housing production,” said Diaz, who was the only one that voted against Aitken’s request for a workshop.
Rubalcava, who staunchly spoke against such a policy, questioned if it works to create affordable homes.
She said she felt she was being “bulldozed” into the ordinance and spoke against calling the proposed policy an affordable housing mandate, but rather an inclusionary housing ordinance.
“We should just call it what it is,” she said. “Affordable housing ordinance just is pulling the wool over the eyes of our voters.”
Aitken pushed back on her comment saying she was using the same title that Costa Mesa officials called a similar ordinance passed over there.
“I’m sure our colleagues in Costa Mesa aren’t trying to pull the wool over their voters,” she said.
Housing and Community Development Director Grace Stepter told council members that developers “unilaterally” told city staff that affordable housing mandates equalize the playing field because it would end spot zoning for such homes.
She added that the builders said requiring roughly 10% of new developments be set aside for affordable housing was doable.
“The majority of jurisdictions that have adopted it are about 10%,” Stepter told council members.
Tuesday’s discussion comes after independent investigators last year alleged developer favoritism at city hall, including allegations that a prominent developer would sit in the city’s housing director chair, boss people around and invoke the name of former Mayor Harry Sidhu if there was pushback.
It also comes as some residents have called for a rent stabilization ordinance in recent meetings.
Will Affordable Housing Mandates Work in Anaheim?
While officials continue to resist such a policy in Anaheim, roughly a third of Orange County cities have implemented laws requiring developers to build affordable homes in their housing projects.
It’s a policy housing advocates have long said are effective in producing more low and very low income homes.
Orange County’s median income for a four-person household is close to $128,000, roughly 13,000 above what’s considered low income, according to the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development.
A four-person household making less than $72,000 a year is considered very low income.
Cesar Covarrubias, executive director of the nonprofit Kennedy Commission, said at Tuesday’s meeting that while the city has many tools to help produce affordable homes, they still have to address the needs of working families in Anaheim that the housing market isn’t.
“If we want to get to the next level we have to look at those tools that we have not explored yet, or that we continue to say, ‘let’s not look at those because we don’t want to introduce inclusionary housing,’” he said “Production happens.”
It’s not just advocates.
A city-hired consultant told elected officials in March that inclusionary housing laws are working across the country and Stepter – at the time – said the policy would make a difference in Anaheim.
[Read: Will Anaheim Require Developers to Build Affordable Homes?]
Real estate interests say otherwise.
Adam Wood, vice president of the Building Industry Association Southern California OC chapter, said at Tuesday’s meeting that elected officials can’t subsidize their way out of the housing crisis.
“We can’t tax the development community as a way to produce more housing. This is the one industry that is out there trying to provide more housing for everyone. Putting up new hurdles and barriers is not going to be particularly constructive to getting more housing constructed,” he said.
A Voice of OC investigation earlier this year found Santa Ana – one of a handful of municipalities with the mandate – had the most low and very low-income housing built in Orange County over the last five years.
Over 1,600 homes were constructed for those income levels.
It also found that for the most part developers have built mainly above moderate income housing for the past five years across OC – including most of the cities that have affordable housing mandates.
[Read: Are Affordable Housing Mandates Working in Orange County?]
Between 2018-2023, over 5,100 homes were built in Anaheim – of which 92% were for above moderate income families, 4% for very low income families and about 2% were for low income families, according to a state database.
A Housing Trust In Anaheim
That same night, officials finalized creating a housing trust that could help fund programs like eviction protection assistance, neighborhood revitalization, down payment assistance for homebuyers and gap financing for affordable homes.
[Read: Two More OC Cities Create Housing Trusts; Are They Effective?]
Money for the trust is expected to come from state and federal housing funds and grants, voluntary developer contributions, and around $30 million from Disneyland as part of an agreement to expand the entertainment juggernaut’s iconic theme park.
[Read: Anaheim Approves $2 Billion Disneyland Forward Expansion]
That’s not the only idea being floated around to help bring money to the trust.
In the wake of a state audit that came after two separate corruption investigations in Anaheim, Rubalcava publicly suggested using tourism tax dollars intended to market the Disneyland Resort to help fund the trust fund.
[Read: Will Tourism Dollars Help Fund Anaheim’s Affordable Housing Trust?]
In a scathing review, state auditors alleged that the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce used tourism tax dollars given to them by Visit Anaheim to lobby dozens of elected officials and support the campaigns of resort friendly candidates for more than a decade.
City spokesman Mike Lyster said in a Tuesday email that discussions on the use of the tourism money for housing is still under consideration.
“We don’t have anything to share today but could see updates in the coming weeks,” he said.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Aitken said the tourism dollars would be limited for housing resort workers.
Editor’s note: Ashleigh Aitken’s father, Wylie Aitken, chairs Voice of OC’s board of directors.
Hosam Elattar is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at helattar@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @ElattarHosam.
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