Orange County still lags on affordable housing despite years of local pushes and a statewide mandate to build more housing aimed at struggling working class families.
Over 25,000 housing units have been built in Orange County between 2021 to 2024 to help curb California’s housing crisis.
Nearly 17% — 4,361 homes — qualified as affordable, which in Orange County means homes aimed at a four-person household making less than roughly $136,000 a year.
The building comes as state officials are requiring city leaders to plan for more affordable housing by the end of the decade amid rising housing costs — mandates that have faced stark pushback from local city council members.
Editors’ Note: This dispatch is part of the Voice of OC Collegiate News Service, working with student journalists to cover public policy issues across Orange County. If you would like to submit your own student media project related to Orange County civics or if you have any response to this work, contact admin@voiceofoc.org.
Santa Ana and Anaheim have seen the most affordable homes in the region, accounting for 47% of Orange County’s housing for low income families built between 2021 to 2024, according to a state database.
The database is expected to be updated with the amount of homes built in 2025 once the fiscal year ends in June.
Some other OC cities like Aliso Viejo and Huntington Beach haven’t seen any affordable homes built in that three year time period with their tabs on the database blank.
A lack of affordable housing leads to wider implications, according to Cesar Covarrubias, executive director of The Kennedy Commission.
“If we don’t have housing that’s stable and affordable for working families, then we continue to have housing instability and homelessness,” Covarrubias said.
Chapman University students, in partnership with Voice of OC, launched an investigation into how many affordable homes have been built in recent years and which cities have seen the most development of affordable housing.
To view how much housing has been built in your city, click here.
Under the state’s latest housing planning cycle that started in 2021, officials across Orange County together have to zone for over 180,000 new homes — and 75,000 of them have to be designated for very low and low income families.
The Orange County median income for a four-person household is $136,600, with low and very low income households making less than $135,350 annually.
How Are Cities Doing With Affordability Progress?
Aliso Viejo, Brea, Huntington Beach, Laguna Woods, Los Alamitos, Rancho Santa Margarita, Seal Beach, and Villa Park have not built any affordable homes between 2021 to 2024, according to the annual progress database.
Santa Ana has built the most affordable homes, with 1,681 of 3,382 total new units classified for low income households. Anaheim is next, followed by Garden Grove, Westminster, and Irvine.
Three of the five leading cities have adopted an inclusionary affordable housing policy, which requires developers to reserve a portion of new residential units at below market rates for low-income households – or pay a fee that goes into a fund aimed at producing affordable housing.
While around a third of Orange County cities have adopted similar policies, including Costa Mesa, Huntington Beach, and San Juan Capistrano, not all of them are contributing equally to affordability goals.
Despite Huntington Beach implementing its own mandate to encourage affordable housing developments, they have built zero affordable homes.
The city has been losing in a string of lawsuits against the state over claims that state housing mandates are unconstitutional due to their charter city status.
[Read: Huntington Beach Continues to Lose Lawsuits Arguing Charter City Rights]
Mayor Casey McKeon said the notion that Huntington Beach isn’t delivering affordable housing is false.
“We just won a huge award at the Orange County Business Council for our streamline program,” McKeon said in an interview. “It’s just a misnomer that the press tries to accuse us with saying no, we’re not delivering affordable housing, which is incorrect.”
No homes were built in Huntington Beach between 2021 to 2024, according to the state database.
Kelsey Brewer, vice president of Business Development and Government Relations at Jamboree Housing Corporation, singled out San Juan Capistrano as a city that is making good progress with affordability, with 90 of 472 total new homes being classified as affordable between 2021 to 2024.
“When you think of South Orange County, you don’t think of affordable housing, but San Juan Capistrano’s doing a great job in terms of incentivizing affordable housing development in their community,” Brewer said.
David Duran, co-founder and volunteer at Housing is a Human Right Orange County, said that most cities are struggling to address affordable housing, but he recognized the efforts Santa Ana and Irvine had done in the past.
“Nobody’s doing great right now,” said Duran. “In recent times, Santa Ana and Irvine did a pretty good job of having some regulations that supported inclusionary housing. I would have to at least recognize Irvine for still being better than most.”
Duran said that elected leaders have not been making affordable housing a priority for their cities.
“The elected officials have the power to help support more housing for the most vulnerable in their city,” Duran said. “They neglect the population that needs the most help. Everyone deserves a place to live. The thing that is getting in the way is the elected officials.”
According to March 2026 data from the California Association of Realtors, the average price for an existing single-family home in Orange County is $1,467,500.
Brewer said the cost of living in Orange County has reached a new level of unattainability — one that now affects almost all residents.
“Ten years ago, there was the idea that we were creating housing for people that worked at McDonald’s or had these very low-level entry jobs or folks that were homeless,” Brewer said. “But there’s not many people that can afford a $1.2 million home, even if they are a working professional.”
Brewer said many local leaders say the state’s mandated housing goals are unattainable in a county already highly developed.
“There’s lots of cities that would argue that is just unfeasible,” Brewer said. “They’re built out, or they don’t have the ability to actually attract developers like Jamboree or others, or have any money that they can put towards affordable housing within their community.”
Brewer suggested that such cities can get creative in finding areas where they’re okay with having more density.
Chip Ahlswede, vice president of the Apartment Association of Orange County, argued that state requirements are unrealistic for cities that are already widely developed.
“Orange County and Los Angeles County are all very densely developed as it is,” Ahlswede said in an interview. “Maybe we should be looking more at Kern County or Imperial County to see how we could build up their infrastructure so that they could adopt more housing.”
Both Brewer and Ahlswede pointed out that building affordable homes comes with financial hardships, which is often the cause for a lack of development.
“If the state’s putting more and more mandates on the cities, but not really creating financial incentives, it leads to a lot of frustration,” Brewer said. “Especially with cities that are pro-affordable housing, they just don’t have the resources to be able to accomplish it.”
Cities Implement Affordability Mandates
A few OC cities have adopted their own rules requiring developers building in the city to include affordable homes in their projects or pay a fee – commonly known as inclusionary housing laws.
Anaheim, Brea, Costa Mesa, Huntington Beach, Irvine, La Habra, Laguna Beach, Laguna Woods, Mission Viejo, San Clemente, San Juan Capistrano, and Santa Ana have designated ordinances.
[Read: Are Affordable Housing Mandates Working in Orange County?]
Covarrubias said city initiatives help local governments meet their goals as affordability-based developers are more likely to take on projects in the area.
“We are seeing cities like Santa Ana, Mission Viejo, (and) Irvine, who have implemented these policies, be more consistent in developing balanced housing — market rate housing, but also affordable housing,” Covarrubias said. “And those cities that do not have those policies in place are struggling.”
Still, some cities are struggling to boost their affordable housing stock even with their own requirements.
Of the 12 cities with their own ordinances, three haven’t built any affordable housing: Brea, Huntington Beach, and Laguna Woods.
Both Huntington Beach and Laguna Woods have built zero homes between 2021 to 2024, according to the database. In Brea, all 707 new housing units have been classified as above moderate.
Ahlswede said in the case of Laguna Woods, the lack of development can be attributed to high density.
“(Laguna Woods is) already pretty much as developed out as it possibly can be, but every single time we go through one of these housing cycles, they are given a number of units that they need to build,” he said. “Well, the community was primarily master planned and there isn’t much outside of it. Thinking that they’re going to be able to build units isn’t necessarily viable.”
While some cities struggle with finding space and money to build new affordable units, Covarrubias said the county needs to address the root issues of land availability and funding.
“We need the County of Orange and cities to step up with public land, and the County of Orange to issue a housing bond, to be able to have the finance to develop affordable housing.”