Elected officials in a handful of Orange County cities sought to provide greater protections and assistance this year to renters and tenants – many of whom are struggling to pay the rent amid inflation and rising housing costs and are calling for rent control.
Buena Park City Councilman Jose Trinidad Castañeda, who is a renter himself described what it has been like for tenants this year in OC in one word:
“Insane.”
Castañeda headed up efforts in Buena Park to get some form of citywide rent control – something his colleagues were seemingly on board with earlier this year – but the city has not enacted such a policy.
[Read: Rent Control Could Come to Buena Park]
“It’s absolutely insane to be a renter in Orange County and leaders need to step up to make it easier and more affordable to live,” Castañeda said in a phone interview.
Some have.
Assistance for renters this year came in the form of greater eviction protections in cities like Buena Park and Costa Mesa as well as a rental home inspection program to ensure tenants are living in habitable conditions also in Buena Park.
And it happened on the backdrop of Gov. Gavin Newsom and Sacramento officials increasing pressure on cities across Orange County to plan for over 180,000 new homes – 75,000 of which have to be designated for very low and low income families – amid a housing crisis.
Costa Mesa City Councilman Manuel Chavez said that residents in his coastal city have had it hard these past years and called the eviction protection law a big win for the community.
“A lot of people have had to move out of their apartments,” he said in a phone interview. “More families are doubling up in apartments.”
Costa Mesa’s new law implements safeguards for residents from being evicted by landlords who want to do renovations, sell the property or want to live in the house themselves – speedlining a new state law expected to go into effect in 2024.
According to a city staff report, between July through October of this year over 60 households including ones with children received eviction notices and about 60% of residents in the city are renters.
The law also allocates $300,000 from federal COVID bailout dollars to rental assistance providers to help people facing eviction and $250,000 – also from COVID dollars – for legal services to enforce the law.
Soon renters across OC and the state will all have similar eviction protections after Newsom signed a state law in September that would require landlords to have building permits before booting a renter on the basis of substantial repairs among other requirements.
The new state law is expected to take effect in April and includes a host of other protections, like requiring owners who evict tenants to live on the property themselves to live there for at least a year.
This year, Orange County’s Housing Authority also briefly opened its waitlist for Section 8 Housing Vouchers – a federally funded program that helps subsidize rent for low-income residents – for the first time in a decade.
In Orange County, the median gross rent is $2,057, according to census data.
And the County’s median income is close to $128,000, according to the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development.
But the poverty rate is nearly 10%.
Will Rent Control Be Coming to More OC Cities in 2024?
The assistance and protection programs also come after residents in Buena Park and Costa Mesa showed up to city council meetings earlier this year demanding rent control.
[Read: Calls for Rent Control Increase in Orange County as Housing Crisis Worsens]
But at least one official in each of those cities said they don’t expect a debate on rent control on the dais next year.
Chip Ahlswede, a spokesperson for the Apartment Association of Orange County, said he expects most cities to wait and see what policies the state adopts and what happens with the Santa Ana ballot measure in November before considering rent control further.
“I think also people are seeing a lot of the problems with the fact that the city of Santa Ana has had to go back to the drawing board multiple times on their rent registry on the makeup of their rent board, and things like that,” he said in a phone interview.
In Santa Ana – the heart of the county and the only city in OC that has adopted a citywide rent control ordinance – city officials there have been grappling with implementing, enforcing and protecting the ordinance passed in 2021
City council members there decided to ask residents to reaffirm or deny rent control in the November 2024 election.
[Read: A Battle For Orange County’s Only Citywide Rent Control Ordinance]
Castañeda called for the city to consider implementing rent control stricter than the state law earlier this year after residents raised the alarm on rents becoming increasingly unaffordable.
Castañeda said he doesn’t expect the city to tackle rent control in 2024, but rather explore greater renter protections.
He pointed to the rental home inspection program that passed this year as a stepping stone to help address concerns of renters in the city.
“It becomes a huge opportunity to stack other programs and other opportunities for outreach. We can incentivize apartment owners and property owners to upgrade their homes and their apartments so that it’s a win win win,” Castañeda said.
Pressure for rent control didn’t only pop up in Buena Park.
Latino community health outreach workers – known as promotores – have shown up to Costa Mesa City Council meetings calling on elected officials to implement rent control.
[Read: Calls for Rent Control Intensify in Coastal Orange County’s Costa Mesa]
The Latino community healthcare workers were instrumental in helping get COVID testing, vaccines and other resources into Orange County’s hardest hit neighborhoods during the height of the pandemic.
Still, Chavez said that he doesn’t anticipate city officials taking up rent control next year, but instead thinks they’ll focus on getting more affordable homes built in Costa Mesa.
He said that while such ordinances like eviction protections are helpful, increasing the city’s affordable housing stock will get at the root of the issue for renters – who make up most of his city’s population.
“People just need homes and they need homes they can afford and the way to create that is by having more market supply,” Chavez said.
Ahlswede said one way cities can help renters in a way that’s fair to landlords is to hire an ombudsman that can mediate between the city, landlords and tenants to help solve issues.
“There are landlords who aren’t hearing their tenants saying that they’re tapped out and they can’t go any further,” he said. “There are tenants that aren’t hearing from their landlords and just assume that they’re swimming in Scrooge McDuck piles of cash and not caring about them.”
Hosam Elattar is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at [email protected] or on Twitter @ElattarHosam.
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2023-12-28 13:58:00 , Voice of OC
