Are Affordable Housing Mandates Effective in Orange County?








Does requiring developers to build homes for low-income families in residential projects boost a city’s affordable housing stock?

It’s a question that’s long been debated across Orange County – home to some of the most expensive zip codes in the United States.

So far, state data shows 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.

The city that had the most very low and low income housing built in the last five years was Santa Ana – one of a handful of cities that has a mandate – with over 1,600 homes constructed for those income levels.

The mandates are getting a renewed focus in the county amid pressure by state officials to address California’s housing shortage and affordability crisis.

It also comes as county leaders report an increase in homelessness which they say is partly due to a lack of low income homes.

Local housing advocates like Cesar Covarrubias, executive director of the nonprofit Kennedy Commission, have long said mandates work to generate more affordable homes.

“We do believe that they’re effective to be able to address the need for housing that the market is not producing for those cities where they don’t have any programs,” he said in a Monday phone interview.

Covarrubias also said in order to realistically increase the production of affordable homes there needs to be partnerships with developers and the communities they are building in.

“There has to be a partnership where everybody wins. Developers win because they’re going to be doing the residential housing part of it, but then you’re also going to have an opportunity for the cities to say we have community needs and some of those benefits should not only go for profit for developers, but also profit our community,” Covarrubias said.

Adam Wood, vice president of the Building Industry Association Southern California OC chapter, said in a Tuesday phone interview that the mandates help a handful of families, but prevent thousands of homes from being built.

“Ultimately, you’re creating an increased supply-demand imbalance, which is going to make housing more expensive for the majority of people and then everyone who we’re trying to help is going to get squeezed even harder unless they’re a lottery winner,” he said.

Wood said to create affordable housing at a larger scale there needs to be an increase of supply to meet the “crushing demand.”