Santa Ana’s Housing Shortage: Will there ever be enough?
By Chris Taylor, INvision Santa Ana
With an average of 4.4 people per household, Santa Ana is one of the most overcrowded cities in the nation.i According to the 2013 Orange County Community Indicators Report, Santa Ana has the largest household size in Orange County and the 10th highest in the nation. ii To put that into perspective, if Santa Ana were to achieve the same average as the rest of Orange County, it would have to add 32,246 (or 41% more) housing units to the existing 76,896, and this does not even account for additional housing needs as a result of population growth in the near future. However, the most worrisome thing surrounding these facts is that the city and its leaders have completely inadequate goals to alleviate this enormous problem.
The city recently issued the new 2014-2021 General Plan Housing Element and I’d like to take this opportunity to point out some concerning parts of that plan here. For some reason, the city has recognized the immense overcrowding problem in the previous and current plans, yet has grossly failed to address the housing shortage. Even more worrisome is that in the last plan there was at least a call for more housing despite the inadequacy of these goals and the lack of follow-through; yet, in the current plan it seems that the city has decided to pretend that this problem doesn’t exist at all. Compare the following paragraphs taken from the same part of the respective plans: Continue reading