From left: Taryn Palumbo, Walter Nicholls, Carolina Valdivia and Dara Sorkin.
Nicholls, Valdivia expose Orange County’s housing equity obstacles
Public officials in Orange County and California as a whole may have good intentions when they enact legislation to make housing, mortgages and rents more affordable and equitable, but enforcement is ineffective, according to UC Irvine Department of Urban Planning & Public Policy Chairman and Professor Walter Nicholls.
He made this observation Feb. 6 before an audience packed into The Cove at Beall Applied Innovation, where the philanthropic nonprofit Orange County Grantmakers had invited local media, educators, students, administrators and professionals from multiple sectors to “The Path Ahead: OC’s Roadmap to Equity.”
Nicholls spoke during a panel discussion on housing and income inequality at the event, co-sponsored by the School of Social Ecology, The Cove/Beall Applied Innovation, USC Dornsife Equity Research Institute, Orange County Community Foundation, OC Forum and CalOptima Health.
Weak enforcement of housing laws has allowed such places as Huntington Beach, Villa Park and South Orange County to avoid new building of high-density projects, according to Nicholls, who noted these developments inevitably wind up being concentrated in already compacted North County communities like Stanton, Buena Park and Garden Grove.
“It’s a little bit of a sad story that more housing is being built in places that are already pretty dense, that already have multi-family [units],” the professor said. “So, rather than addressing the housing crisis, which was supposed to result in more housing and more equitable housing, it could be resulting in the continuing disparities between South Orange County and North Orange County.”
One way he mentioned that certain municipalities get around laws to enact more housing for the working class is to permit small multi-unit projects that include a couple affordable apartments. Often the builder or developer gets a tax break for the entire project because it is labeled as affordable housing, Nicholls added.
But, he does not totally fault policymakers for this phenomenon. It surprises Nicholls that there has not been more grass-roots activism regarding the state and county’s housing crisis. Instead, any uprising more often comes from what he calls “Green Lawn Bolsheviks” (or what you may know as NIMBYs for “not in my backyard”).
Responding to a question from the audience about the need for more out-of-the-box thinking, Nicholls agreed that there should be more emphasis placed on introducing new portable dwellings.
Something must be done, especially in California. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell told the U.S. Senate Banking Committee on Feb. 11 that in 10 to 15 years, mortgages will not be available in parts of California and other states that have been ravaged by wildfires in recent years. That’s because homeowner insurance policies will not be written in those areas. No homeowners insurance, no homes.
That revelation fed into something else Nicholls mentioned to the audience, which was that “in another 10 years, we anticipate being a majority renter county.”
Indeed, he observed that renters should be a more important part of any dialogue about housing in Orange County, which currently is mostly focused on home ownership.
The panel with Nicholls was moderated by Orange County Grantmakers’ Executive Director Taryn Palumbo and also included as experts UC Irvine Assistant Professor of criminology, law & society Carolina Valdivia and Professor of medicine Dara Sorkin, who is a School of Social Ecology alum (2004, Ph.D. psychology and social behavior).
The featured attraction at “The Path Ahead: OC’s Roadmap to Equity” was the unveiling of the 2025 Orange County Equity Report, which is a follow-up to the inaugural 2019 version from Orange County Grantmakers and the St. Joseph Fund. One key finding in the latest report is that by 2022, about one in three Orange County residents was born outside the country, and roughly one in seven were either undocumented or lived in families with at least one undocumented person.
“These residents in mixed status families … have deep roots in the community,” Valdivia said. “They have connections. They have their homes. They have their places of work. It’s where their kids are going to school.”
She made reference to the times we are currently living in, when “anti-immigrant policies” are on the rise.
“I know Mississippi policymakers are currently considering a bill that would create a bounty award program of sorts, where people are encouraged to report undocumented immigrants, and they would get $1,000,” the assistant professor said to audible audience gasps. “Florida and Texas have introduced similar bills.”
Valdivia fears the recruitment of “other actors” — police officers, hospital workers, employers, other strangers — to participate in the enforcement of immigration laws. “It is creating an environment where families are becoming fearful of this goal of seeing their immigration status revealed to others or even being found out in the process of applying for a job or apartment or credit card and so forth.”
It would help move California and Orange County toward more housing equity if more cities adopted sanctuary policies, according to Valdivia.
Santa Ana is an official sanctuary city, where police and officials do not cooperate with federal immigration enforcement operations, while Huntington Beach recently dubbed itself a “non-sanctuary city.” President Donald Trump is trying to abolish sanctuary-city status.
“Sanctuary policies are definitely a step in the right direction, especially in the sense that there’s great concern among the undocumented, and it makes sense because their families may be separated and removed from their own homes following an encounter with law enforcement,” Valdivia said. “If we can have more cities and states moving in the direction of passing sanctuary policies, that would help address equity issues related to housing access and stability as well for folks.”
Other key 2025 Equity Report findings include:
- Orange County’s economy was slightly better than the nation in terms of income and home ownership in the late 1970s, when the population was 78% non-Hispanic white.
- From 1979 through 2022, real gross domestic product in Orange County grew 238%, compared with 148% for the nation as a whole.
- Between 1980 and 2022, the county shifted from 78% to 38% white residents, with Latinos now representing 34% of the population and Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders at 22%.
- Also In 2022, the median household income in Orange County for a white family with a child 5 or younger was $150,000, far more than the median income for Black ($99,500) and Latino ($76,800) families with similarly aged children.
- If Orange County achieved racial equity in incomes, people of color would see their average annual incomes increase by more than $32,000–a 67% gain.
- Orange County’s economy could have been $97.4 billion stronger in 2022 if racial income gaps that have festered since the 1970s had been closed.
- Home to about 3.2 million people, Orange County now has a diverse population, ranking 20th among the 150 largest regions in the United States in that category.
- About 25% of the income in the U.S. goes to 1% of the population, the highest that percentage has ever been.
“Incomes for those at the top have gone steadily up, and gone up higher in OC,” Professor Manuel Pastor, director of the USC Dornsife Equity Research Institute that oversaw the report, told the event crowd. “Incomes at the bottom have gone down, and they’ve gone down more in OC. There’s inequality in the nation, and you all are experiencing it on steroids.”
— Matt Coker