Façades of Equitable Development

Abstract

This article problematizes the development of affordable housing as a form of equity planning. Through both qualitative and quantitative data, the article examines three affordable housing projects within a redevelopment plan in Santa Ana, California. The research finds that a narrow focus on affordable housing, as it is designed and produced within the larger affordable housing complex, facilitates the process of gentrification and displacement. The findings show that equity is more than housing production alone. When affordability is defined at a larger scale, and the planning process is stripped of substantive community participation, affordable housing loses its more equitable underpinnings.

Keywords

equity planning gentrification affordable housing community-based organization

Introduction

Equity planning is based on an activist, interventionist, and redistributive paradigm. It rejects the view that planners are apolitical technicians that serve an undifferentiated public and functions instead from the position that planners must identify and resolve unjust disparities by privileging opportunities for the most marginalized populations. The principal document establishing equity planning, the Cleveland Policy Planning Report (1975), is unequivocal with regard to this preferential focus, stating, “Equity requires that government institutions give priority attention to the goal of promoting a wider range of choices for those Cleveland residents who have few, if any, choices” (Krumholz, Cogger, and Linner 1975, 299). Consequently, the Commission recommended that inequalities in transportation, housing, and community development be addressed through restructuring public policy objectives toward reducing poverty and increasing the choices for those with the lowest incomes. Explicit in this approach was the view that some places are more unequal than others and deserve just attention and redress (Bates and Zapata 2013).

Today’s urban context is much different than what Krumholz and other equity planners in Cleveland faced. Yet despite these differences, similar problems persist in the current urban landscape. For example, rather than capital and demographic flight, many urban centers are experiencing redevelopment and the concomitant threats of gentrification and displacement. The increased demand for high-end housing in areas that have traditionally housed those with the least effective demand has consequently left poor and working people in a familiar predicament. Thus, with insufficient incomes, poor and working people are still unable to afford access to many of the benefits of revitalization, such as quality housing, transportation, and forms of community development.

Urban planners concerned with equity have come to look to the development of subsidized affordable housing as a tangible option to deal with housing disparities arising from the devolution of state functions from ownership to facilitation and subsidization. Through an examination using both qualitative and quantitative data of three related case studies of affordable housing development in Santa Ana, California, this article shows how the affordable housing complex (AHC) mediates the struggle for equity. In defining the AHC, we borrow from two fields: the critique of the nonprofit industrial complex within the field of social justice work (Incite! Women of Color Against Violence, 2007) and regime theory generally (Fainstein and Fainstein 1983; Stone 1989). We define the AHC as an incentivized structure that links various state- and nonstate actors, including corporations, philanthropic foundations, and nonprofit organizations, to the development of subsidized affordable housing through political and economic relationships. While intended to mitigate disparities in housing, these actors can participate in the marginalization of radical alternatives, the reproduction of broad social disparities, and the legitimization of neoliberal ideologies regarding urban problems and how to address them. Thus, despite providing much needed housing for low-income households, the research finds that a narrow focus on affordable housing—as it is designed and produced within the larger AHC—can aid processes of gentrification, community disempowerment, and displacement. This research contributes to our understanding of the role of community-based engagement and participatory processes in the struggle for more equitable and responsible development.

Theoretical Framework

The notion of the AHC is based in two interconnected fields of scholarship: the nonprofit-industrial complex and regime theory. The notion of the nonprofit industrial complex is an adaptation of President Eisenhower’s famous warning regarding the rise of a military-industrial complex in the post–World War II era. Emphasizing the relationships between both state and nonstate actors within a system of capitalist accumulation tendencies, it highlights how economic motivations for policy and decision making can produce a cycle of war and militarization. By drawing attention to a complex of actors with alternative motivations, the notion reveals hidden economic and political motivations behind practices. The nonprofit industrial complex borrows explicitly from this literature and applies the notion to the nonprofit sector in order to argue that a similar complex has arisen that connects philanthropic institutions with government and community-based organizations (CBOs). In this complex, nonprofit social justice work is understood to be embedded within larger economic and political structures that sometimes stifle alternative and radical strategies for change. Regime theory complements this work by not only stressing the importance of relationships between actors but also by focusing on hegemony and the structures that create a certain amount of predictability and stability in capitalist accumulation (Aglietta 1979; Lipietz 1987). Regime theory’s emphasis on hegemony is furthermore important because it suggests that regimes produce paradigmatic ideologies in order to rationalize practices (Jessop 1983). Together, the two fields lend themselves to the possibility that a complex of state and nonstate actors can form around the production of subsidized affordable housing. Through its hegemonic logic and capitalist incentivization structure, the AHC is able to reproduce subsidized affordable housing that is politically and economically viable in various locations despite opposition or support, thus, in effect, marginalizing local community struggles for social justice.

The following three subsections further develop the concept of the AHC. The first of these briefly traces the historical lineage of CBOs and Community Development Corporations (CDCs) as important actors in the field of state-subsidized affordable housing. The following subsection problematizes the concept of affordability as a standard for equity and lays out how this measure is mobilized within the AHC. Finally, a third piece shows how the AHC can both produce consequences that are contrary to assumptions regarding affordability and equity and become integrated into sociospatial urban strategies associated with gentrification and development.

Community-Based Organizations as Actors

The AHC is an incentivized structure that links the production of subsidized affordable housing to state and nonstate actors including nonprofit organizations that are dedicated to equity planning and community development. Equity and advocacy planning were part of a larger movement for social change at the community level that unfolded in the postwar period. Emerging out of the urban unrest of the 1960s, one of the main manifestations of this movement was the formation of CBOs focused on the mobilization of residents for economic and political power through protest and disruption (Piven and Cloward 1979). The radical potential of this emerging organizational structure was significantly curtailed, however, through a combination of internal and external factors that pushed CBOs and CDCs toward housing and physical development (Bockmeyer 2003; Halpern 1995; McCarthy and Zald 1973; Moy and Okagaki 2001). Internal factors include funding sources and their implications on goals and strategies, the professionalization of CDCs and CBOs, as well as a reorientation away from protest and toward service provision (Berndt 1977; DeFilippis 2004; Halpern 1995; O’Connor 1996). Externally, a larger shift in both the devolution of state practices combined with an emerging regime of foundational support, principally through the restructuring of the tax code, worked to transform what can be loosely thought of as a “political opportunity structure” for nonprofit housing development (Hall 1987; Tilly 1978). Through this evolving structure, nonprofit CBOs and CDCs have come to constitute the primary source of affordable housing development in the United States (Vidal 1996, 2002). In order to produce housing for low-income households, nonprofit developers combine their efforts with “the resources and support of a sizeable cadre of other organizations, including foundations, financial institutions, corporations, and public agencies at all levels of government” (Vidal and Keating 2004, 127). In the process, the complex not only integrates itself into corporate financial strategies through partnerships and ownership but it also brings in a number of other industry actors including professionals with specific services necessary to housing development as well as national intermediary organizations such as Local Initiatives Support Coalition (LISC), the Enterprise Foundation, Housing Assistance Council (HAC), and the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation (NeighborWorks America). From the local to the national scale, these actors form the AHC.

Affordability

The concept of affordability plays a fundamental role in the mobilization of the AHC. A number of authors have critiqued the institutionalized notion of affordability (Nelson 1994; Stone 1993). Not only has it been shown that the affordability metric used in both the HOME Investment Partnership (HOME) and Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) programs fails to serve those at the bottom of the income scale (Chicago Rehab Network 2002; Cummings and DiPasquale 1999; Miami Coalition for the Homeless 2014), but there is also no guarantee that these programs will match low-income residents in the communities where subsidized housing is built with the units that are intended to be affordable to them. Further evidence suggests that the placement of affordable housing projects in low-income neighborhoods has a positive effect on neighborhood property values, suggesting that subsidized affordable housing can facilitate appreciation in the housing market (Baum-Snow and Marion 2009; Freeman 2004; Galster et al. 1999; McClure 2006; Rosenthal 2008). A similar effect exists for other housing programs such as HOPE VI (Abt Associates Inc. 2003).

While improvements such as increases in property values and neighborhood amenities are certainly beneficial, researchers should not assume that they constitute a tide that raises all boats. Indeed, the benefits of affordable housing are often missed by opponents who struggle against their design and placement (Nguyen, Basolo, and Tiwari 2013; Scally and Tighe 2015). Rather, the resulting neighborhood changes and the inevitable conflict that ensues urges us to question development for whom and at what cost as equity planners previously advocated. For example, research has shown that displacement can assume a number of forms, not all of them direct (Davidson and Lees 2010; Marcuse 1985). Increases in people with higher incomes relative to a neighborhood’s demographics and rising property values through new construction can actually contribute to indirect displacement of low-income populations and renters through what Marcuse called “displacement pressure” or “exclusionary displacement” (Davidson 2008; Marcuse 1985). The process is illustrative of state-led gentrification strategies such as social mixing that ultimately reduce housing affordability through “price shadowing and a creeping gentrification frontier, along with other neighbourhood changes . . . [that] make it increasingly difficult for residents to ‘stay put’” (Davidson 2008, 2390). This underscores Michael Stone’s argument that there is no such thing as affordable housing. “Affordability,” he states, “is not an inherent characteristic of housing, but a relationship among housing cost, household income, and a standard of affordability” (1994, 443). In this context, the AHC can disrupt local conditions and facilitate certain actions in ways that are often missed in analyses of subsidized affordable housing.

Affordable Housing as a Sociospatial Strategy

Stone’s critical conception of affordability permits a more complicated view of subsidized affordable housing production that exposes how the AHC can be integrated into sociospatial strategies associated with gentrification and development. Scholars of land markets have long observed that value at one location is relationally determined by uses and developments at neighboring sites (Bates 2006; Qadeer 1981). Affordable housing projects that raise land values can thus function as beachheads for future development, “clearing the way” for a “gentrification by stealth” by being first, unaffordable to many neighborhood residents, and second, by influencing the housing market (Bridge, Butler, and Lees 2012; Davidson 2008; Goetz 2003). In an important analysis of the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) and HOPE VI programs, Edward Goetz (2003) questions the results of efforts to deconcentrate poverty. The metaphor that occupies the title of the work, “clearing the way,” captures one of the main problems with these programs. That is, rather than improving conditions in distressed neighborhoods or the residents that inhabit them, deconcentration often represents an attempt to reclaim urban neighborhoods for higher income groups. We believe that a similar analysis can be applied to subsidized affordable housing projects in certain key locations that are tied to development strategies. In other words, even state-subsidized affordable housing development, which is essentially intended to address neighborhood inequalities, can produce unintended consequences that make low-income residents increasingly vulnerable within a landscape of rising land values and gentrification. Affordable housing, like the ideologies underpinning the deconcentration of poverty, thus functions as a powerful legitimizing discourse for intervention in the housing market in order to facilitate urban change. It furthermore exposes the existence of a local hegemonic bloc organized around the revitalization of central urban space through combinations of state and nonstate actors that regime theorists identified as crucial to the formation of urban politics (Jessop 1996).

This framework helps researchers reexamine the concepts, tools, and strategies of equity planners such as affordability through a critical and analytical perspective. Taking an actor-centered approach, this research considers how both state- and community-based actors embed concepts such affordability within larger neoliberal planning strategies such as gentrification and displacement. Consequently, the rise of CDCs and CBOs as inner-city housing developers raises important questions. For example, what is the role of community actors and the effect of market-driven affordable housing production as one of the primary modes for addressing inequity and sociospatial exclusion? More specifically, does the placement of subsidized housing align with gentrification strategies such that they represent beachheads for gentrification-oriented development and future displacement? We find that an AHC connects regime actors in government, CDCs, and CBOs at the local level with federal and state funding streams that incentivize investor-led affordable housing production over equity concerns.

Methods

This article examines the development of affordable housing and the relationship with community struggles for equity. This study involved various methods, including three interrelated case studies of affordable housing development in Santa Ana, California, from 2007 through 2012. According to Simons, a “case study is an in depth exploration from multiple perspectives of the complexity and uniqueness of a particular project, policy, institution, programme or system in a ‘real life’ context” (Simons 2009, 21). The primary purpose is to generate deep understandings that can inform policy, practice, and community action (Hesse-Biber and Leavy 2011; Simons 2009). These case studies use more than one method to collect data. As a participant observer, one of the researchers worked as a community-based planner and volunteer actively involved in a coalition of CBOs, Santa Ana Collaborative for Responsible Development (SACReD). This work included participating in city council meetings, development tours, community forums, community actions, negotiations, resident trainings, and meetings with city council members. It also included other qualitative data such as meeting notes and informal and unstructured interviews with community organizers, urban planners, city council members, and residents. The analysis of the field observations and interviews for this research focused on actors, roles, community benefits, alliances, and decision-making processes.

The case study sites considered here include three of the most recent affordable housing projects in the city: the Triada, Terraces at Santiago, and the Depot (see Figure 1). These sites are central to the study of the AHC in Santa Ana for the following reasons: (1) all of the developments are 100 percent affordable housing; (2) they are all subsidized through the LIHTC program; (3) they show different levels of active civic engagement on behalf of residents, organizations, and city council members, with different community benefits; and (4) they are affordable housing projects that fall within the same specific plan. The rationale for a multiple case study approach was to not simply understand the differences among the projects, but also to capture the interdependent political and economic relationships among various state and nonstate actors that make up a larger structure of affordable housing development. With multiple case studies, the intention is to compare not only the actual benefits that were won and lost in each development project but also further understand the overarching AHC in which nonprofits, developers, city council members, planners, and residents all play a part.

Figure 1.

Affordable Housing Developments, the Station District, and Surrounding Areas.

This research also analyzes archival and secondary data. We obtained archival data including development agreements, minutes from city council meetings, environmental impact reports (EIRs), promotional materials and drafts of development projects, and specific plans. Archival data produced by community-based planning efforts include documents such as the proposed community benefits agreement, outreach material, alternative project proposals, and participatory action research led by the coalition. Additional demographic data from the U.S. Census and information on area median income (AMI) for Orange County from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) was also obtained. These data were used to analyze the affordability needs for Santa Ana residents and for exploratory spatial analysis in order to map affordable housing developments and demographic variables.

While biases could not completely be avoided, this research is transparent in the role of the researcher as a participant observer and triangulates methods in order to increase reliability and validity. The analysis does not focus on a single set of actors or perspectives but rather examines how the range of actors shapes the outcome. Furthermore, the combination of participant observation, interviews, and quantitative and archival data seeks to strengthen the credibility of the researcher and the research.

Context

The demographics of Santa Ana stand in stark contrast to the image of Orange County as a white, affluent region that is often portrayed in the media (see Tables 1 and 2). Santa Ana is California’s eleventh largest city and home to 324,528 people, of whom more than three-quarters (78.2 percent) identify as Hispanic (U.S. Census Bureau 2010a). Of these, most are of Mexican descent (71 percent) and nearly half of the population is foreign born—47.3 percent (U.S. Census Bureau 2010b, 2012c). This is reflected in the high percentage of households who speak Spanish at home—72 percent (U.S. Census Bureau 2010a). Santa Ana’s unemployment rate has been estimated to range between 8.6 percent, the second highest unemployment average in Orange County, and 11.8 percent in April 2012 (City of Santa Ana 2012; State of California Employment Development Department 2013). Santa Ana is also much poorer than surrounding areas. For example, the percentage of people living in poverty was 21.5 percent, compared to 12.9 percent in the larger Orange County area (U.S. Census Bureau 2012a). Approximately 45 percent of households in Santa Ana earn less than $50,000 compared to 32 percent in the county as a whole. The income level per capita in Santa Ana is almost half ($16,564) of what it is in Orange County (U.S. Census Bureau 2012a).

Table 1.

Housing Demographics for the Station District Census Tracks Compared to City and County Levels.

	Orange County	Santa Ana	Census Tract 744.05	Census Tract 750.02
Median household income ($)	75,566	54,387	44,460	38,810
Mean household income ($)	101,361	67,858	49,987	50,779
Percent below poverty line	12	21	36	31
Percent renter-occupied	41	53	84	87
Non-Hispanic white median household income ($)	85,167	64,049	77,344	39,226
Hispanic/Latino median household income ($)	56,986	52,592	41,892	42,750
Asian household median income ($)	78,960	55,199	n/a	11,137
African American/black household median income ($)	64,541	67,500	9,625^a	32,458

Source: U.S. Census Bureau.

The margin of error for this is estimate is 89,407.

Table 2.

Racial Demographics for the Station District Census Tracks Compared to City and County Levels.

	Orange County	Santa Ana	Census Tract 744.05	Census Tract 750.02
Non-Hispanic white (%)	44	9	5	3
Hispanic/Latino (%)	34	79	92	92
Asian (%)	18	10	1	3
African American/black (%)	2	1	0.4	2

Source: U.S. Census Bureau.

In terms of housing, Santa Ana is an especially unaffordable and overcrowded city. Over half of the housing is renter-occupied, ranging between 55.4 and 52.5 percent and in the census tracts covering the area of this study, renter-occupied housing makes up more than 80 percent of the occupied housing stock (U.S. Census Bureau 2010a, 2012b). The average household size for owner-occupied units in Santa Ana is 4.65 persons and 4.52 for renter-occupied units (U.S. Census Bureau 2012b). Most households—81.5 percent—are families (U.S. Census Bureau 2010a). Twenty percent (20.2 percent) of the renter-occupied housing units in Santa Ana can be considered overcrowded compared with just 5.7 percent at the county level (U.S. Census Bureau 2012d). More than half (52.7 percent) of all occupied units in Santa Ana pay more than 35 percent of their income to rent (U.S. Census Bureau 2012b).

The overcrowding and rent burden experienced by renters in Santa Ana is reflected in the tight housing market. According to the city,

While there is an abundance of studio and one-bedroom rental units, only 27 percent of renter households have one or two members. Moreover, 45 percent of all families who rent have five or more members, but only 13 percent of rented apartments and single-family homes available have three or more bedrooms. This translates into a shortage of 12,000 large family rental units. (City of Santa Ana Planning Division 2009)

The vacancy rate for rental units was a low, 1.9 percent in 2000 (U.S. Census Bureau 2000). While the 2010 decennial census shows improvement up to 4.9 percent, there is some discrepancy in estimates and the fact that the 2012 ACS gives a vacancy rate of just 2.2 percent for the city demonstrates that housing in Santa Ana has been persistently difficult to come by (U.S. Census Bureau 2010a).

These numbers undercount the significant population of undocumented immigrants living in Santa Ana that the Census has difficulty capturing. Researchers have shown that undocumented immigrants play a central role in local economies (Kim 2012). In Santa Ana, both documented and undocumented immigrants shape the social structure and contribute to the planning process through grassroots mobilizations (Gonzalez et al. 2012; Harwood and Myers 2003). Yet despite this role, undocumented immigrants are systematically excluded from many of the state’s housing, education, and political processes. In terms of subsidized housing specifically, Section 214 of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1980 explicitly restricts undocumented immigrants from eligibility. Complicating matters further, many subsidized housing projects often combine several funding sources that make understanding eligibility for undocumented households especially difficult. This is, of course, on top of efforts by undocumented populations to avoid engaging with government on any level for fear of deportation.

Affordability in this context is a problematic and contentious concept. The area median income (AMI) limits established by HUD are based on calculations at the county level. While the vast majority of households and families in Santa Ana are eligible for subsidized affordable housing, in order for it to be accessible and affordable to residents, and especially the neighborhoods covered in this analysis, the affordability mix of subsidized units must be heavily skewed toward those with extremely low and very low incomes (see Tables 3 and 4). The need for quality affordable housing is great; however, the question that concerns this article is how subsidized housing affects the larger housing market in a gentrifying context.

Table 3.

Eligibility for Affordable Units in Santa Ana.

	Percentage below income limit
	Two-Person Families	Three-Person Families	Four-Person Families	Five-Person Families	Six-Person Families	Seven-Person Families
AMI	75	84	87	89	91	91
Lower income (80%)	69	79	83	86	87	83
Very low income (50%)	41	56	59	62	65	58
Extremely low income (30%)	25	31	32	35	37	27

Source: U.S. Census Bureau.

Table 4.

Eligibility for Affordable Units in Station District Census Tracts.

	Percentage below Income Limit
	Two-Person Families	Three-Person Families	Four-Person Families	Five-Person Families	Six-Person Families	Seven-Person Families
AMI	78	95	98	98	97	96
Lower income (80%)	74	94	96	97	96	91
Very low income (50%)	66	89	85	84	82	77
Extremely low income (30%)	52	55	52	52	50	38

Source: U.S. Census Bureau.

The Station District

The City of Santa Ana’s first Redevelopment Area was adopted in 1973. Between 1973 and 1989, the city adopted six redevelopment project areas (Community Redevelopment Agency of the City of Santa Ana 2010).¹ In order to facilitate redevelopment and share tax increment revenues, the city merged the project areas in 2004. For about a decade, up until 2009, the Santa Ana Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) acquired parcels along the Santa Ana Boulevard Corridor. As part of the Inter-City Commuter Station Redevelopment Project Area adopted by the City Council in 1982, this corridor served as a transportation link from Interstate 5 and the Santa Ana Regional Transportation Center into Downtown. This area became a central piece in the planning and development of a 94-acre project known as the Station District (see Figure 1). The Station District was first proposed in 2007 as part of a specific plan that encompassed a much larger area included in the Renaissance Plan. The Renaissance Plan was a specific plan to guide the pattern of future development in a 123-block area covering the Government Center, Downtown, First Street Corridor, Lacy and Logan neighborhoods, and the Rail Station District. The Renaissance Plan came to a halt in 2008 as community members organized to prevent the plan from moving forward because of a lack of community participation.

The Station District can be considered part of a contiguous geography of revitalization efforts in central Santa Ana. This includes the Civic Center, the Downtown Core, the Historic French Park Neighborhood, and the Artist Village (see Figure 1). Santa Ana’s Civic Center is made up of several federal and local administrative buildings, including the Orange County Transportation Authority, the Santa Ana Police Department, and the Orange County Central Jail Complex. The Downtown Core consists of important commercial and residential sites as well as the ongoing Artist Village project. The Historic French Park Neighborhood lies to the north of the Station District and immediately borders the Lacy neighborhood.

The Station District falls within part of the larger Lacy neighborhood and is next to Barrio Logan, both of which are predominantly low-income Mexican communities. It also includes several redevelopment projects near the Santa Ana Regional Transportation Center, a passenger rail station, bus, and taxi terminal. Included in the Station District are a number of housing projects. The Santiago Street Lofts built by Lennar Homes broke ground on July 20, 2004. These were the first transit-oriented live-work lofts in the area. They occupy a 195,000-square-foot area and consist of 108 live-work lofts. Currently, these lofts lease for around $2,500 per month, and sell for approximately $365,000. At around 1,500 square feet each, these units are well above what most people in Santa Ana can afford.

Affordable Housing in the Station District: Three Case Studies

Our concept of the AHC elevates the question of affordability, the role of CBOs as actors, the importance of community-based participation, and the incorporation of subsidized affordable housing projects as part of larger redevelopment strategies. The following three subsidized affordable housing projects covered by this study fall within the Station District. As a site of gentrification, the Station District has seen some opposition by community members; however, unlike other situations where subsidized housing is seen as an anti-gentrification strategy to preserve affordability, none of the following three projects were initiated by the community. The development process and specifics regarding each project are detailed below.

The Triada

The proposed development of Related California and Griffin Realty Corp. for the forty-eight parcels of land included developing subsidized affordable housing units for sale and rent, a community center, and open space. Some of the goals proposed by the Santa Ana CRA included “enhancing public spaces and streets, linking neighborhoods and business with public transit, providing local retail services, incorporating high quality architecture, and providing a variety of housing types with a range of affordability” (City of Santa Ana, n.d.).

As a response to the lack of community input in the previously proposed Renaissance Plan, community activists, organizations, and neighborhood associations came together to create the SACReD, a coalition composed of various organizations, community groups, and residents. Neighborhood based and nonprofit organizations focused on housing, economic justice, health, culture, and historic preservation. Residents involved in SACReD were generally individuals and families who lived in the neighborhood either in or surrounding the Station District. Through numerous forums, community action research, home visits, and meetings, SACReD advocated for “development that reflects community needs and is accountable to those affected” (SACReD 2010). As part of this development, SACReD advocated for twenty-eight points to be included in a community benefits agreement, a legal contract between the community, the city, and the developer, specific to this affordable housing project. The twenty-eight points were formed through community organizing, consensus building, and community action research and resulted in benefits intended to assure the community’s needs that included “development of housing targeted to meet the needs of the local community; development that preserved and enhanced the history and cultural life of the community; public open space that served the community and created a central focus for the area; development that protected the needs of businesses and workers; and infrastructure improvements designed to protect the safety of local residents and school children” (SACReD 2010).

SACReD was able to garner support for the CBA through community organizing, alliance building, and setting up meetings with city council members. SACReD organized various forums where the community came together to learn about the Station District and invited city council members to respond to questions regarding the specific community benefits and the need for a CBA. The CBA not only included the twenty-eight points but would be a legally enforceable contract that the community could utilize to keep both the developer and the city council accountable for the included stipulations. SACReD helped increase community participation in city council meetings, supporting individual residents who were publicly speaking at city council for the first time. In addition to these public demonstrations of support, SACReD was able to garner sufficient community power to bring the city council and developers to the table and negotiate the stipulations included in the development.

The awarded developers hoped to receive the entitlements for affordable housing by June of 2010. In order to approve the Station District project by that deadline, the city used the Transit Zoning Code (TZC) that had been created as part of the EIR for the larger and preexisting Renaissance Plan. The TZC provided zoning regulation for future development in the other areas within the Renaissance Plan including the rest of Lacy, Logan, French Park, Downtown, and Civic Center. While the Station District project only focused on less than seven acres of city-owned property, the TZC made it possible to redevelop close to four hundred acres of land under new zoning regulations.

Despite a room full of supporters for the CBA and previous negotiations, the day of the final vote, the city council unanimously approved a development agreement that included only a few of the community benefits proposed by SACReD but not a legally binding community benefit contract. Key employment related provisions and anti-displacement measures were left out of the development agreement. Nevertheless, a major victory for the community was the approval of affordable housing for extremely low-income families at 30 to 50 percent AMI and below. Also won was funding for historical markers of up to $60,000 and a reimbursement agreement with the Santa Ana School District for $25,000 to create a conceptual plan for a community center. Although there was mention of the “commitment to pursue” the development of a 1.5-acre park in the Station District, no specific plan for a park was included in the development agreement. In addition, subsidized child care, a larger child care center, the Peace and Labor Agreement, and the antidisplacement measures were also left out of the development agreement. These antidisplacement measures included interim housing for displaced residents.

In January 2012, the Triada broke ground as the first major development under the new TZC adopted in 2010. By August of 2013, there were 114 units and 477 residents living in Triada. More than 1,300 people had applied to live there. The project had helped sponsor a public art piece and supported a joint-use agreement to use a neighboring elementary school’s park. These community benefits were largely a result of the community’s participation in the development of the project. The city loaned the project about $14.7 million for rental units and up to $1.5 million for for-sale units. In addition, it cost the city about $19 million in land costs and $30,000 in subsidies to five qualified homebuyers.

Despite its victories, SACReD was significantly less satisfied with the results of the planning process. In particular, the organization observed that many of the difficulties associated with fighting for benefits from a single project could have been more adequately addressed through a reform of the planning process itself. Following the Triada effort, SACReD moved to pass a “Sunshine Ordinance” which mandated pre-meetings around development projects before public hearings, increased notification for neighborhood residents and access to RFPs and RFQs, open calendars of city council members, and budget and strategic plan outreach hearings.

Terraces at Santiago

Since the development of the Triada affordable housing project and the approval of the TZC, another affordable housing project was developed in the same area. In February 2013 the Terraces at Santiago were built and included thirty-five affordable units at two-, three-, and five-bedroom units. The Terraces at Santiago was one of four projects included in one financing package by the developer referred to as WBBB (Washington, Bush, Birch, and Birch) that included a total of fifty-one residential units. The Terraces at Santiago development was completed by C&C and the Orange Housing Development Corporation (OHDC), a CDC focused on the development of housing.

In comparison to the process of developing the Triada affordable housing project, the approval process was relatively fast and there was little community participation. Public approval of the project took place from February through June 2011. Financing the Terraces at Santiago included monies from the Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP), HOME, and the Community Development Agency. It also included financing in the form of a tax exempt bond from the Housing Authority of the City of Santa Ana in addition to tax credits. On March 7th, 2011, there was a public hearing issuing tax exempt bonds for the construction of WBBB. The resolution was approved with no speakers, comments, or staff presentation at this meeting. Despite the relatively small amount of participation, the development is LEED Gold certified, has a fifty-five-year covenant of affordability like the Triada, and includes a small tot lot, a community room, and a courtyard accessible to its residents.

The Depot at Santiago

The most recent affordable housing project in the TZC area is the Depot at Santiago. Located directly across from the Santiago Artist Lofts and the Santa Ana Regional Transportation Center, this two-acre site is still in the groundwork phase. It is the only case study in the research that occurs after the Sunshine Ordinance was passed. The city added a residential overlay to the industrially zoned area when the TZC was approved by the Station District project. The same partnership between C&C and OHDC that took place to develop the Terraces at Santiago bought the Depot in 2013. The city approved a $3-million loan agreement for the construction of a seventy-unit affordable housing development. The current project proposal includes two four-story buildings of 100 percent affordable housing built on the entire parcel. The project includes approximately 8,500 square feet of retail space and a 3,000-square-foot community room that is intended to be used by a local nonprofit organization. As part of the agreement, the developer signed a fifty-five-year affordability covenant.

The project estimated costs are $26.8 million, which includes a $365,434 in Community Development Block Grant funds, and about $2.6 million in federal HOME program funds that target the development of affordable rental housing, and eight project-based vouchers tied to particular units. Despite the fact that the city’s website states that the 1.47-acre site is “vacant,” through our participant observation, we met various people who live in the soon-to-be demolished industrial warehouses. In addition, several businesses, including an artist, a cabinetmaker, and a furniture designer, still have their businesses located on site.

On May 20th, 2013, the city council voted to approve a loan agreement and project-based vouchers with the Depot at Santiago in an amount of $3 million. At this meeting, a council discussion ensued about their concerns around the development and the neighboring residents at the Santiago Lofts. The city council pointed to the Depot as part of larger project and that they were concerned for those residents that paid “top dollar” across the street. The development in this case had to be part of “their” investment, referring to the loft owners. They also stated their concern about reaching out to those in the community and “encouraging” groups such as artists who could potentially benefit from this project.

As part of the planning process, the city hosted community meetings including one on October 21st, 2013, led by the city and the developer. Because of Sunshine Ordinance policies, notices announcing the meeting went out to a 500-foot radius of the project site and 225 notices were mailed to adjacent property owners and renters. Notices were also posted on the property in both Spanish and English. During the October 21st meeting, various concerns were raised by residents, all of which were in English. In the entire group, no one raised their hand when interpretation was offered. Some of the topics included existing traffic conditions, circulation, parking, and the type of retail. The most prominent concern was the effect on the adjacent Santiago Street Lofts and their property values. Attendees were very concerned about the “type” of tenant that would go into the new affordable units. It was added that a local nonprofit would potentially work out of the community space but that the services would not necessarily be open to the entire community and access would be limited.

Analysis: Rolling Out Affordable Housing

The following three sections examine the AHC through a framework that integrates the role of CBOs and state actors in struggles over affordability and highlights subsidized affordable housing as a sociospatial strategy. The process of affordable housing development takes on a different shape in each of these three case studies with regard to time, scale, public participation, and the size of the project. Despite these differences, taken together, these case studies help demonstrate a rolling out of affordable housing through the AHC. The findings suggest that the type of affordability implemented in these subsidized housing projects, the actors that work on behalf of the community, and the sociospatial relationships of these developments, can be part of “clearing the way” for gentrification, and a larger vision for attracting more affluent residents and consumers.

Unaffordable Affordable Housing

Because Santa Ana is relatively poor compared to the rest of the county, affordability determined at the county level effectively raises income limits used for eligibility and maximum rents. This means that subsidized housing in Santa Ana often fails to be affordable for households at the lowest income brackets. For example, Table 3 shows that while a large number of families in Santa Ana are below the county-defined AMI, the greater proportion of very-low- and extremely-low-income families means that if a subsidized affordable housing project is to be affordable to Santa Ana’s low-income population then a majority of the project’s unit mix must be made up of units at extremely low and very low income levels. A related issue is that households who eventually obtain such units will most likely end up paying more than 30 percent of their income toward rent, thus making housing that is intended to be affordable essentially unaffordable. This discrepancy between subsidized affordable housing and what residents can actually pay highlights Stone’s argument that affordability is a relational concept. In addition, Table 3 demonstrates that between 25 and 37 percent of Santa Ana’s families have incomes below the HUD-defined extremely low income threshold. A further 41 to 65 percent are below the very low income limit. Table 4 shows the same statistics for the two census tracts that cover the Station District and shows a much greater need for extremely-low-income units, as 38 to 55 percent of families within these tracts would need units at extremely low income limits to be affordable. Affordable units at higher thresholds are therefore inaccessible to the majority of Santa Ana’s residents. This unaffordability dynamic is even more pronounced in the neighborhoods surrounding the Station District where the housing developments are located.

Furthermore, as we see in Table 5, the affordability mix of each development varied greatly. An important part of the struggle for a community benefits agreement with the Triada developers included a push for a higher proportion of units at the extremely low income level, resulting in a higher percentage of extremely-low-income affordable housing units in the project. In the other cases, where community organization and pressure was not a factor, however, we see less affordability overall. In addition, community pressure to link the development project to the surrounding community through community benefits beyond the project boundaries was not present with either of the two latter case studies.

Table 5.

AMI Mix for Developments.

	30% AMI, % (n)	40% AMI, % (n)	50% AMI, % (n)	60% AMI, % (n)
Triada	20.5 (23)	20.5 (23)	58.9 (68)
Terraces	11.4 (4)		88.6 (31)
Depot	10.1 (7)	20.3 (14)	40.6 (28)	29.0 (20)
Total	(34)	(37)	(127)	(20)

Source: Compiled by authors from development documents.

Community-Based Organizations as Actors

In these three case studies, the AHC raises important questions about the role of community actors and their alliances. The work of CDCs, nonprofit organizations, and coalitions involved in the production of affordable housing represent a range of interests and alliances. In none of the cases did the community-based efforts or local CDCs actually initiate the affordable housing project. However, the affordable housing helped garner support from significant CBOs. One case study shows how organizations were critical of including only housing benefits. Through the struggle for community benefits, community residents attempted to leverage the city in order to win demands that went beyond an individual housing project and which met inequities in public space, cultural representation, and tenure security. In the other two case studies, CDCs were involved, but no other community benefits were eventually represented in the final plans.

While the coalition addressed some of the challenges in transparency, notification, and participation in the planning process through the Sunshine Ordinance, without organized community pressure, it does not guarantee a comprehensive or equitable planning outcome. For example, the Depot at Santiago increased the amount and notification radius around the project. However, despite this, there was little diversity in the interests presented at community meetings. Without an organized community presence, what remains is a “rolling out” of affordable housing where government, developers, and CDCs form a regime whose interests dictate planning outcomes.

Affordable Housing as a Sociospatial Strategy

Development often represents the conflicting “spatial strategy-making” of diverse social actors who, through their actions, help to construct landscapes of inequality (Healey 2007). The affordable housing developments discussed in this article were part of an effort to implement the future Renaissance Plan beyond the Station District boundaries by mobilizing the AHC. Both the city and SACReD understood that the Station District plan was connected to the larger vision for development shared by many regime actors. For example, the city saw it as part of the Renaissance Plan and won the rezoning of an entire area, making it ready for new development. The coalition on the other hand, proposed to include assurances in the entire TZC area that would guarantee certain affordability levels, antidisplacement measures, and relocation assistance for displaced households throughout the area that would help to provide stability in the face of gentrification threats. None of these community-level benefits were included.

In general, the city’s choice for locating affordable housing reveals that it is increasingly concentrated within and close to the heart of where gentrification efforts are unfolding. We see this in time and in location. Figure 2 shows the construction of subsidized housing projects in the City of Santa Ana from 1969 to October 2012. Increasingly dark points indicate more recent time periods. The distribution of points shows a general trend toward concentration in and around the central gentrifying context in Downtown Santa Ana. These points are also overlaid on census tracts differentiated by the standard deviation of Santa Ana’s poverty rate. This pattern suggests an AHC strategy to place affordable housing in areas where it benefits revitalization efforts, as beachheads for future development. For example, city council members explicitly stated such connections as rationale for the Depot’s loan approval.

Figure 2.

Affordable housing projects in context.

Unaffordable affordable housing without antidisplacement measures for the surrounding neighborhoods shows that rather than benefiting the poorest residents with the greatest need, subsidized housing projects can negatively impact vulnerable populations whose interests are not considered in the AHC. The point is reminiscent of equity planners’ efforts to secure distributional justice. The contradiction lies in that even the development of affordable housing and capital investment in low-income communities—a common struggle for community development planners—can form part of a strategy of displacement.

Conclusion

Quality affordable housing is essential to community equity. Housing has been shown to be central to a number of community concerns such as health and well-being, the reproduction of culture, educational outcomes, and stability. In other words, it is critical for those concerned with equity and justice. Placing subsidized affordable housing within a complex provides planners and community members a critical view of the tension between structural limitations and agency that shape the struggle for equity. Our work shows how the AHC is problematic in this way for three primary reasons. First, the institutionalized form of affordability within the AHC prioritizes higher geographic scales that, in our case, function at the expense of local conditions. An equity approach in this context would necessitate a reexamination of affordability that targets the needs of Santa Ana’s lower-income families. This is magnified within smaller scales, for example, at the neighborhood level, where affordability can be stretched by new developments that transform local housing market conditions. In order to avoid reproducing the boilerplate response of affordable housing to deal with inequity, planners and community organizations should consider sociospatial strategies of time, place, and scale when deciding what affordable housing projects to support and defend. This means moving away from seeing site-specific stipulations separate from city, regional, and national tactics.

Second, the production of subsidized affordable housing can become part of a larger complex that draws on community needs to facilitate the interests of developers and politicians. In this way, affordable housing can function to disrupt communities, displacing those with the least security, either directly or indirectly, or by providing housing options for those with the most access and choice from either within or outside the community. This dynamic of the AHC ultimately reduces the operational definition of equity to affordable housing production at the expense of other community concerns or even the long-term viability of the community itself. Such exclusive attention to this type of equity can lead to increased inequality, especially with regard to the undocumented and extremely-low-income populations.

Third, without organized community participation, the AHC tends to reproduce and circumscribe the interests of CDCs and CBOs within a larger capitalist process of market-driven reform (Angotti 2008). While affordability can garner support from CBOs, it does not necessarily imply a community-based initiative or project. To address this, equity planning requires not just the institutionalization of reforms, but organized community participation that can formulate an alternative vision for the city with the interests of marginalized communities at the forefront—a preference made explicit in the traditions of equity planning and redistributional justice. “Our model, after all,” states Krumholz in his review of equity planning, “asks city planners to be what few public administrators are: activists, risk-taking in style, and redistributive in objective” (1982, 172). However, organized community participation does not automatically stipulate equitable development (Beard and Sarmiento 2014). An equitable approach requires building increased access to political decision making for low-income communities and developing policies that hold the city and developers legally responsible for certain community benefits. CBOs have traditionally played an important role in similar processes of political engagement in underrepresented communities (Hum 2010; Simpson 2015). In addition to increased access to decision making, equity planners need to focus on questions of accountability and transparency and how these link to participation (Krumholz 1982). Therefore, similar to research on CBAs, this article concludes that equity planning is most effective as part of “a larger accountable development and economic justice movement” (Parks and Warren, 2009, 90). The power of public participation is relative to the ability to monitor, enforce implementation, and leverage the burden placed on CBOs with these tasks. Without antidisplacement measures and comprehensive community benefits such as quality jobs, local hire policies, and mechanisms of accountability, affordable housing can become part of the process of gentrification and, thus, the disintegration of existing communities.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biographies

Carolina S. Sarmiento is an assistant professor in the Department of Civil Society and Community Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research focuses on race, inequality, and community-based planning.

J. Revel Sims is an honorary fellow in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His work focuses on the nexus between urban displacement, gentrification, and urban theory.

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