Correspondence - Item #18 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Becerra, Alexis From:Nathaniel Greensides <mynci90@gmail.com> Sent:Tuesday, March 4, 2025 To:eComment Subject:Agenda item 18 City Council meeting for March 4 2025 Attention: This email originated from outside of City of Santa Ana. Use caution when opening attachments or links. Dear City Council, I write in opposition to the item - specifically the proposal to allow what was once rental housing for long term low- income tenants to now be sold as individual condo units (likely to out of town absentee landlords) located at 425 E. Wellington Avenue (I am in support of the creation of 40 new affordable units at 621 W. Alton Avenue). In 2021, I assisted two families who were being "renovicted" from the property at 425 East Wellington Avenue. They had lived in their respective units for a few years at the building in reference and had lived in the City of Santa Ana for decades with their children attending SAUSD schools. The families were struggling to find new affordable places for rent upon being served legally valid notices of eviction so that the then landlord (who at that point had recently acquired the property), an LLC entity which was in actuality, just one individual from Newport Beach, could renovate. The families court appearances were scheduled on zoom and I assisted two families with ensuring they appeared virtually in court to tell the judge that they had been able to find a new place to rent (albeit in Anaheim and at a much higher price) to avoid an eviction on their records. They sadly left Santa Ana and the property has now sat vacant for almost if not more than 4 years. In the time that the residential property has sat vacant, I did pass by regularly to ensure that there were actual renovations taking place as it would be illegal for the landlord to have evicted the tenants and then proceeded to not perform any upgrades. I believe these upgrades that were made should be looked into closely to ensure that said renovations were actually necessary or crucial, or if the renovations were solely for the purpose of generating profit for out of town absentee landlords. It is also suspect to me that the property is now being proposed for sale as individual condos with a non-profit housing partner in tow. I was taught that if I buy an investment, it may decline in value and I should be prepared for such a scenario. Instead, it seems, out of town "investors" in the Santa Ana housing market believe otherwise and are now seeking special deals to ensure private profit. On one hand it can be argued that this is a good thing - to increase the amount of housing units for people to own instead of rent. However, first, no new housing units are being created here and second, I know that many of the more "affordable" condo complexes all throughout our city are still largely un-obtainable for the vast majority of current residents. In these "more affordable" condo complexes, many out of town landlords operate the individual condo units as rental units which ultimately renders the entire condo property ineligible for federally backed mortgages (which is one major contributor to ensuring that families can successfully transition to become long term stable homeowners in the USA). When these affordable condo units are gobbled up by out of town investors and then successively rented out, our community stability and housing market stability suffers as a result. A more responsible local approach that can stabilize our local housing economy would be to enact policies which incentivize conversion to co-ops or to land held in trust by community led organizations with the structures owned by individuals. https://www.mpslaw.com/co- opdominium-a-path-to-affordable-condominium-unit-ownership Additionally, I believe that it is immoral and un-Christian to let housing sit vacant until the highest bidder comes around while more and more families are stretched ever thinner if and where not already housing challenged or homeless. While I respect and applaud the work of the non-profit housing developer being brought into this agenda item (Habitat for Humanity), I wish to offer that it is not always true that any and every non-profit housing entity has corporate structures and missions which are directly aligned with the specific interests of long-term Santa Ana residents. There are many local non-profit organizations in Santa Ana that can and should be considered for partnership if the property is to 1