Anaheim City Council members are asking their staff to come form a plan for a new housing trust fund, but details on what the program could do for residents battling poverty and rent spikes are still unclear.
While precise plans on how much money would go into the fund or what they would be spending it on are still in the early stages, city staff are now set to come back with more detailed plans for a plan some time in the next 30-45 days.
Grace Stepter, the city’s director of housing and community development, said the fund could accept money from both the city, nonprofits and for-profit companies, adding that the money could go beyond just building affordable housing to help with rent assistance or other programs.
“The beauty of a trust fund is it’s a blank slate,” Stepter told council members during Tuesday’s public meeting. “That’s where you have the maximum flexibility.”
City council members were unanimously supportive of moving forward with some kind of housing fund, but they all had different ideas about what it could actually be used for.
Councilwoman Natalie Meeks shared multiple ideas on using it to develop more affordable housing, but also told officials to pull back the city’s current affordable housing standards to encourage families to move out faster.
“Sometimes when you put a family into a place that’s so big and better than anything they could afford on that next step, they’re not leaving,” Meeks said. “That’s awesome, but I also want to help people move into independence.”
Councilwoman Natalie Rubalcava said the focus should be on support for first time homeowners to help ensure people were moving out of rental housing.
“The emphasis should be on first time home buyer programs,” Rubalcava said. “The revenue from property taxes is up, so if we can help people get into homes that they purchase it would help our tax base.”
According to a city staff presentation, a household would need to make an annual salary of at least $233,000 to afford a home in Anaheim, or bring in $102,000 a year to afford rent in a two bedroom apartment.
About half the city’s residents are on a public healthcare plan.
The County’s median income is close to $128,000, according to the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development.
A four-person household making less than $115,000 a year is considered low income and less than nearly $72,000 is considered very low income.
While city leaders have been talking about creating a housing fund since at least 2021, similar programs in Orange County have seen mixed results.
The Orange County Housing Finance Trust, which Anaheim is currently a member of and was repeatedly referenced by city staff on Tuesday night, has been around since 2018.
Their goal is to create 2,700 units of permanent supportive housing by June of next year.
According to data from Supervisor Doug Chaffee’s office, they’ve successfully built 1,340 permanent supportive housing units, with another 895 units still in construction or getting close to a construction loan.
Altogether, that’s 2,401 permanent supportive housing units in progress over six years, leaving the trust with nearly 300 units to build in one year if they want to meet their goal, with $10 million in funding for the agency this year.
There are another 788 units the agency is on its way to funding.
Last October, the trust also launched a new program to offer homeowners up to $100,000 in loans to build an accessory dwelling unit, also known as a granny flat, on their property if they agreed to rent them out to very low income tenants for at least a decade.
The Irvine Community Land Trust, which was set up by the city council in 2006 as a nonprofit to help spur new affordable housing, has created less than 500 affordable units in 18 years.
Last year, multiple Irvine council members questioned if the trust should even remain active, admitting it had failed to spur the kind of development they once hoped for, but it was ultimately left in place.
[Read: Irvine Considers Creating New Housing Agency, Questions if Old One Worked]
Noah Biesiada is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at nbiesiada@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @NBiesiada.
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