Abstract

California’s housing planning system seeks to address housing shortages and promote housing development in areas accessible to transit, jobs, and socioeconomic opportunities. Since 2017, the state Legislature has enacted a set of laws seeking to strengthen the housing planning system through a complex array of standards, requirements, and procedures. California’s current housing planning system is comprised of a complex housing target allocation mechanism and enforcement mechanisms to ensure that local governments effectively accommodate the development of the allocated housing units. However, the complexity of the rules will likely lead to numerous implementation challenges. This dissertation, consisting of three studies, examines the implementation of California’s current housing planning system at different levels of government and highlights the trade-offs related to the complexity of the system. The first essay draws on interview data and observations of public events and underscores the ways in which the complexity of the state’s planning rules has posed implementation challenges related to administrative efficiency, inclusive decision-making, flexibility, legal uncertainty, and legitimacy perceived by different stakeholders. The second essay compares the mechanism that the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) uses to allocate housing units to local governments with two simpler alternatives. Through the assessment of different allocation scenarios in the SCAG region, this essay finds evidence that a simpler allocation mechanism could potentially guide housing development to transit- or jobs- rich areas more equitably and with lower administrative burdens. The third essay turns to planning implementation at the local level and examines the trade-offs involved in directing new housing opportunities, especially subsidized housing, away from relatively poor neighborhoods. Focusing on the City of Los Angeles, this essay finds evidence that newly subsidized housing would alleviate residential crowding in single-family neighborhoods but not in relatively crowded, high poverty neighborhoods. The empirical results, however, may be driven by the growing demands for affordable housing units with the appropriate size in these neighborhoods. This dissertation reveals implementation trade-offs that are at least in part due to the complexity of the planning processes and techniques that are required by state law or promoted by government agencies. Current complex rules in place may not necessarily achieve the goal of promoting housing development equitably. Possible directions for improving state-led housing planning efforts involve simplifying the system in a way that reduces the use of administratively complex procedures and the reliance on overly technical approaches. Decision-makers should be aware of the potential trade-offs among different policy objectives and, in some cases, need to recognize that important objectives may conflict.

Abstract

This study investigates the perspectives of neighborhood change that exist among residents from varying backgrounds in neighborhood associations and community-based organizations in Santa Ana, California, a predominately low-income and Latinx community in central Orange County, California. The objective of this study is to acquire a greater understanding of why some individuals oppose some neighborhood changes, while others withdraw from changes, and others come to accept them. This study further seeks to investigate what has given rise to their distinct perspectives of neighborhood change. Results contribute to environmental psychology and neighborhood change literature by highlighting the social and psychological aspects of sustainable urban development and neighborhood change by understanding how residents from varying backgrounds feel about the change they are observing and experiencing.

Individuals from neighborhood associations (NA) and community-based organizations (CBO) in Santa Ana are the focus of this study given their active opposition to urban development since the 1970s. In this study, I detail how individuals embedded in NAs, individuals embedded in CBOs, and individuals with no group affiliation vary in their perspectives and responses to observed change in the context of sustainable urban development taking shape in Santa Ana. With qualitative research methods, I draw from environmental psychology, urban sociology, and planning literature to investigate how individuals perceive change and respond to disruptions to place. Data collected include 41 semi-structured interviews, field notes from participant observations of city council and neighborhood organization meetings, and archival documents including local newspaper articles and city government meeting minutes.

Findings demonstrate that perspectives and responses to change vary by race, class, generation, and proximity to change. Whereas individuals embedded in NAs (consisting of mostly middle-class homeowners in their 60s) are more open to changes occurring in Downtown Santa Ana, they are more resistant of changes in the form of high-density apartment units occurring in their own neighborhoods given the threat they impose to the character of their single-family neighborhoods. Individuals embedded in CBOs (consisting of mostly renters in their 20s-30s, Latinxs, and low-income residents) are more likely to resist projects that impose a threat to their place identity, especially many changes occurring in Downtown Santa Ana. Individuals from both groups provide a critical reevaluation of what change means in this era of increased sustainable development in the shape of policies, investments, and projects. Such matters highlight the opposing views and tensions related to class and race that exist among those influencing change in a city like Santa Ana and are bound to come forward in planning processes and outcomes.