City of Irvine Looks at Ditching Land Trust for a Housing Authority

The City of Irvine has led Orange County in new home construction, with tens of thousands more homes than any other city. Yet its land trust created less than 500 affordable units.

That’s why Irvine is looking at ditching its trust and creating a housing authority to spur the development of affordable homes, the Voice of OC reported.

The Irvine Community Land Trust, founded in 2006, has created 475 affordable housing units for low-income families, most of them rentals. And that hasn’t cut it during a statewide housing crisis, city officials say.

Vice Mayor Tammy Kim, also chair of the land trust, said the city should look toward setting up its own housing authority, similar to those operated by the county, Anaheim, Santa Ana and Garden Grove.

“I think we have to look at every tool in our toolbelt, like a housing authority, and we need to explore that to see if that’s a route we even want to go,” Kim told the Voice of OC. “It’s something I think we need to look at.”

Irvine is the OC star of housing development, building 20,000 more units than any other city in the county during the state’s last development cycle, according to the Kennedy Commission, a local nonprofit that tracks affordable housing development.

From 2014 to 2020, the city saw more than 31,000 new homes, 1,149 of which were affordable for the very low income households in OC – now considered a family of four that earns less than $108,400 a year. The city has more than 5,000 units now considered affordable.

During that period, the trust built 184 housing units, or less than half a percentage point of the city’s overall housing development, and around 16 percent of the total affordable units for very low and low income housing built during that time.

According to the trust’s financial disclosures, it’s sitting on $77 million in assets, including $20.5 million in cash and investments. Annual expenses were less than $1 million last year.

“First glance, they have delivered far fewer units than I would expect given their budget,” said Councilwoman Kathleen Treseder, who supports a potential switch to a housing authority.

Others such as Councilman Larry Agran, who was on the council when the land trust started, defended its performance.

Kim said the benefit of a housing authority is that the city could receive and issue housing vouchers from the U.S. Housing & Urban Development Department.

Irvine now gets around 1,100 vouchers from the county housing authority, according to city staff. But that’s a fraction of what similar-sized cities in Orange County receive, including 6,300 vouchers for Anaheim and 3,000 vouchers for Santa Ana.

— Dana Bartholomew