All Out for Affordability

By Alan Mallach

Irvine, a city of 180,000 in conservative Orange County, California, plans to make 10 percent of its housing stock permanently affordable. The city set a goal of putting nearly 10,000 units in a community land trust by 2025. Currently Irvine has 4,400 affordable units from inclusionary zoning and HUD-assisted projects; the city hopes to include these units in the land trust. Housing in the land trust would be affordable to people earning less than 120 percent of the median household income, which was over $72,000 in 2000. Funding for the land trust will come in part from the redevelopment of a former military base as a public park.

Alan Mallach, senior fellow of the National Housing Institute, is the author of many works on housing and planning, including Bringing Buildings Back and Building a Better Urban Future: New Directions for Housing Policies in Weak Market Cities. He served as director of housing and economic development for Trenton, N.J. from 1990 to 1999.

Published by the National Housing Institute