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.

Planning for affordable housing, its engagement with mixed use planning, and revising how affordability is defined

“…Sarmiento and Sims (2015) conducted three case studies on mixed-use, affordable housing developments in Santa Ana, California, and note that even with the inclusion of mixed-use planning, affordable housing residents still struggled to achieve equitable access to services, amenities, and opportunities due to, in one case, a lack of organized community efforts, and in the other two cases due to final decisions made by council. In two of the three case studies, community residents sought to achieve community benefits that went beyond the individual housing project and would improve equitable development for the community, such as public space and cultural services, yet no community benefits were included in final plans that were approved by council (Sarmiento & Sims, 2015). These case studies provide insight into how affordable housing developments that seek to achieve improved equity for their residents may require more than the application of mixed-use planning.…”

“…As was pointed out by Sarmiento and Sims (2015), community efforts to obtain improved access to services, amenities, and opportunities can be poorly organized or completely discounted. In the case of the M Station apartments, city planning, particularly transit planning, met funding challenges that made it difficult to deliver on promises of improved transit accessibility.…”

“…Another aspect to understanding the relationship between mixed-use planning and access to services, amenities, and opportunities for affordable housing residents, is to look at how affordability is defined. Sarmiento and Sims (2015) do invest some of their paper into understanding the nuances of affordability. They note that with all their case studies, the AMI of the county is used to define affordability, yet the AMI of the county fails to represent the extremely low-income families found within the neighbourhoods where the affordable housing units are being developed (Sarmiento & Sims, 2015).…”

“…Sarmiento and Sims (2015) do invest some of their paper into understanding the nuances of affordability. They note that with all their case studies, the AMI of the county is used to define affordability, yet the AMI of the county fails to represent the extremely low-income families found within the neighbourhoods where the affordable housing units are being developed (Sarmiento & Sims, 2015). They conclude that what this ultimately leads to is the development of "affordable units at higher thresholds [that] are therefore inaccessible to the majority of Santa Ana's residents," (Sarmiento & Sims, 2015, p. 331).…”

Planning with Unauthorized Immigrant Communities

“…Affordable housing is one of these. Widespread stigmatization of the undocumented, however, including local policies that regulate housing density and overcrowding, unfairly targets, and restricts housing access for unauthorized people (Harwood and Myers 2002;Basolo and Nguyen 2009;Sarmiento and Sims 2015).…”