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A couple dozen Orange County residents called on county supervisors to prioritize spending on housing as homelessness increases throughout the region and called on officials to let people give more input on the $9.5 billion budget.
Housing wasn’t the only thing residents pushed for at Tuesday morning’s public hearing on the county’s budget for the 2024-25 fiscal year.
A host of OC residents and advocacy groups like the Center for Asian Americans in Action are also calling for greater accessibility and transparency for residents to better see, understand and weigh in on how their tax dollars get spent during the budget process.
They also called on officials to make the budget and all accompanying documents available in multiple languages, with at least two people voicing their opinion about the budget during Tuesday’s public comment in Spanish.
In Spanish, the two residents urged Orange County Supervisors to prioritize spending on housing programs, community services and immigration services.
There were no translators on hand for their comments at Tuesday’s public meeting.
“Many of my colleagues didn’t understand the folks who came up here and spoke in Spanish,” OC Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento said.
“I definitely don’t understand somebody who comes up and speaks in Vietnamese. Those are things that are important, because those comments that I heard in Spanish were extremely powerful.”
In contrast, cities like Anaheim, Santa Ana and Westminster have translators at their respective city council meetings to provide translations for officials and residents.
Sarmiento voiced support for translators so supervisors can understand what residents who can’t speak English are saying.
In Orange County, about 46% of residents speak a language other than English at home, according to the census.
A Push for Greater Accessibility & Transparency
Multiple people pushed supervisors to create a more transparent budget process that is accessible and digestible for all community groups, including various Asian American communities.
Mary Nguyen, a policy and research manager with the California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative, said people in the nail salon workforce work long hours and don’t have the time to take part in the budget hearings.
“We urge you to create a budget process that is more transparent and engaging with the public and accountable to your constituents,” she said. “To ensure that the budget process is inclusive and accessible, the board should hold educational or informational workshops that are in-language and during times that work for the majority of the community’s workforce.”
While a summary of the county’s budget is translated into multiple languages, the budget itself is only available in English.
Supervisor Katrina Foley said she has worked for years to make sure the budget process was more accessible by providing workshops and providing the budget in various languages.
Sarmiento said he supports having meetings on the annual budget more accessible to people with transportation and mobility issues, as well as hosting meetings in the evening so they can be more accessible to working class people.
Santa Ana, where Sarmiento was mayor before being elected to the OC Board of Supervisors in 2022 holds public workshops in the months and weeks leading up to the city adopting a budget – including sending out surveys to residents on where they want to see the city prioritize spending.
Supervisor Chairman Don Wagner and Supervisor Andrew Do did not comment on concerns raised by residents and community groups during Tuesday’s meeting.
Housing
On Tuesday, residents and members of community groups like Housing is a Human Right OC called on supervisors to prioritize affordable housing and criticized county officials for prioritizing Sheriff spending over housing.
“Spending on criminalization and law enforcement has no place in addressing homelessness and actually causes more harm. Instead, until we can truly practice Housing First, funds should be directed towards emergency non-congregate shelters within each community that looks like hotel rooms,” said Maura Mikulec, a social worker and homeless advocate.
Over $350 million, or around 3.6% of the county’s budget for the next year, is aimed at developing more housing for residents or connecting them with housing through programs like vouchers.
Nearly $1.8 billion or just under 19% of the county’s budget for next year is being spent on public protection, which includes the OC District Attorney’s Office, probation and the OC Sheriff’s Department.
[Read: Does Orange County Spend Enough on Building Housing?]
Tuesday’s comments come after county leaders last month reported a close to 2,000-person increase in the county’s homeless population amid a lack of affordable housing.
“Over 500 people died while living on the streets of our wealthy but unequal County last year. Your recommended $1.1 billion discretionary budget, which you control and set the priorities for ignores this crisis,” said Eve Garrow, a policy analyst with the ACLU at Tuesday’s meeting.
Foley said housing is the most critical issue and a difficult one because it requires more than just money to solve.
She said officials need land, zoning and entitlements to get housing built.
“In the last couple of years, we’ve accelerated the efforts to make more funds available for different affordable housing developers, as well as the community to be able to address the housing needs,” she said.
“That’s not to say we’re doing enough but we are accelerating those issues.”
She added costs of materials like lumber and steel, fees charged by cities and interests on construction loans create challenges to building affordable homes.
Foley said plans to bring forward a construction loan program through the OC Housing Finance Trust to help reduce construction costs.
“There are a lot of costs that need to be addressed and need to be brought down so we can take our dollars that we do have and spread them out more widely,” she said.
Supervisors Sarmiento and Doug Chaffee both said homeless prevention is an important and cost effective way to address the housing and homelessness crisis.
“Getting in front of the unhoused problem is very important and it’s a lot more cost effective to keep a person housed,” Sarmiento said at Tuesday’s meeting. “We just don’t have the housing that we need. That is clear, because it is very expensive to build one unit.”
He echoed Foley’s comments and said they need to work with cities to address the issue.
Both Sarmiento and Chaffee brought forth homeless prevention pilot programs earlier this year intended to help residents in their districts with rent and financial assistance.
“We need to focus more on prevention, and keep less people out of homelessness and the trauma that goes with that,” Chaffee said.
[Read: Orange County Gets Proactive on Homelessness: Will it be Enough?]
The three supervisors also said they would like staff to more clearly lay out in the budget where affordable housing dollars are going for residents to have a better understanding of the spending.
Officials are expected to adopt the final budget on Tuesday, June 25.
Hosam Elattar is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at helattar@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @ElattarHosam.
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