According to the Fair Housing Council of Orange County, Home Is Where the Trouble Is

"Immigration has and will continue to influence Orange County's population change," reads the Orange County assessment of impediments to fair housing, a document prepared by the county and submitted to United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. "It is expected that most of the immigrants settling in Orange County will come from the same areas of the globe as those that now reside in the county: Asia and Central America. They will be younger, have lower levels of education, have higher poverty rates, and have lower levels of English proficiency. . . . The need for programs that assist immigrants in helping to provide safe and adequate housing will still persist."

Nowadays, though, everyone seemingly needs fair housing services. According to data from the Council on Community and Economic Research, Orange County is the ninth most expensive place to live in the United States. Given Southern California's long, slow return from the depths of the Great Recession, fair housing is no longer about isolated problems with solutions solved solely by the FHCOC—it's now the new normal, with no resolution in sight.

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Dustin Ames

Khoi Pham

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More About

• Cesar Baxin
• Khoi Pham
• Denise Cato
• Politics
• Local Politics

Despite the new challenges, funding for fair housing in general hasn't been increasing—or even staying the same. A victim of the sluggish economy and disappearance of redevelopment investments, such funds—sourced from the federal government's Community Development Block Grant program and a requirement to receive those monies—have actually been decreasing. Spending by the three largest municipalities in Orange County has either stayed the same or gone down in the past few years. In 2007, Santa Ana spent a total of $72,396 on fair housing services; in 2014, just $67,517 is budgeted. In 2010, the county spent $68,000 on fair housing, while only $47,500 in 2013. Anaheim, the largest city in the county, has spent $100,000 each year since 2007, even as the city's urban poverty has received nationwide notoriety.

"The role [of the FHCOC] should be no different in the future than in the past: to prevent discrimination," says Bob Johnson, the vice chairman of the council's board of directors. He has been involved in the cause since 1966. "It's changed a great deal. . . . In the mid-'60s, we would expect apartment owners and managers to discriminate, not only in Orange County but across the United States. . . . Now, there are more categories for discrimination—families, gays, the mentally ill. We don't expect managers to discriminate, but it happens. But at the same time, more people are willing to fight discrimination. They're not as afraid to speak up now."

If funding fair housing weren't mandated by the federal government, the FHCOC might not even have money. The council is the only nonprofit to receive money from Santa Ana's Community Development Block Grant, the last survivor of a fund that once gave grants to nearly 50 different such organizations. Today, the money, intended to fund community-development projects such as anti-poverty programs, youth services and affordable housing, is mostly used to balance the city's budget.

"I've had to lay people off," says Denise Cato, the president and CEO of the FHCOC, from her office on the southern edge of downtown Santa Ana. "I've cut back on everything I can possibly imagine."

The office itself is rarely quiet, usually hosting a cacophony of conversations spoken in the hushed tones of people who are afraid of being banished from their homes. Listen hard enough, and you may begin to differentiate the Spanish from the Vietnamese from the English.

The FHCOC building itself is a perfect, brutalistic prism: four walls joined together at right angles, with two floors and a ceiling. There's no decoration apart from some scant signage and a thin, vertical row of windows. The receptionist's desk in the lobby is staffed by a piece of paper asking visitors to ring an accompanying bell for service. The most obviously new part of the office is a gate that guards the parking lot while the office is closed. The council had it installed after the homeless began sleeping there.

Compared to 2007, the FHCOC's budget has been slashed in half, from approximately $1 million to $500,000. Its staff has been pared down from a high of 18 to a paltry 10. But despite the cutbacks, the council does as much as it can to alleviate housing discrimination. In addition to Cato's duties as CEO, she also teaches the majority of its training classes. Though it no longer holds contracts with all of the cities in Orange County, the council refuses service to no one.

"I would never turn people away," Cato says. "I came here to work for David Quezada [a former FHCOC executive director and current director of the Los Angeles Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity]. . . . He taught me that residents of Orange County stick together, and we're not going to turn our heads on anyone. For as long as I'm in this position, I'm not going to reject anyone who walks into our doors."

Though housing discrimination today is a far cry from the days of covenants, blockbusting (a business practice in which real-estate agents would convince homeowners to sell their houses at a loss because minorities were moving into the neighborhood) and redlining (charging residents of a specific geographic area more for services such as loans), new challenges are appearing as demographics change. "[Housing discrimination] used to be more prevalent, maybe 10 years ago," says George Smith, the director of housing at the AIDS Services Foundation Orange County. The foundation offers a full slate of social services to HIV/AIDS-positive individuals and their families, including emergency financial assistance and housing to those at risk of becoming homeless. "Landlords were well enough informed about fair housing laws that they wouldn't be direct about why they did what they were doing. Things like that still happen in families, though, especially more conservative ones. The families will throw their children out if they're gay or HIV-positive. We see between three and four of those cases a year."