Will An Industrial Moratorium Raise Housing Costs In Santa Ana?

The Santa Ana City Council recently extended a moratorium on permits for industrial developments near two of the city’s oldest but historically marginalized neighborhoods, but residents and activists fear the protections will raise already high rents.

Proponents, though, say the move will have lasting environmental and health benefits.

Patricia Flores Yrarrázaval, the executive director at Orange County Environmental Justice, welcomed the move as there has been “an incredible amount of air pollution that's negatively been impacting the health of our families here.”

What does the moratorium entail?

The moratorium suspends new industrial activity and hits pause on any existing expansion projects until March of 2025 in the neighborhoods of Logan and Lacy.

Over 130 businesses across 450 acres will be affected by the moratorium. During the pause in industrial activity, city staffers will track calls to law enforcement and the fire department and work with other agencies to determine the health risks to the neighborhoods from having these businesses in close proximity.

In 2022, the Orange County Fire Authority received 66 calls for life threatening health emergencies, with 29 of those calls specifically for respiratory issues. In 2023, the number of calls increased by 7%.

Yrarrázaval, who grew up in Santa Ana knows first hand about the health impacts.

“My mom, without being an environmental expert, knew that she had to walk through the Logan, Lacey, Del High neighborhoods to get to work and that that exposure to industrial air pollution is probably what gave me and my siblings asthma,” she said.

A Grist report last year highlighted how even though the EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory shows the presence of 99 sites where hazardous material could have been released in Santa Ana, state business records noted 300 active industrial sites as recently as 2014. Some of these sites were not documented by the EPA because the federal agency does not require small businesses to report emissions bypassing oversight.

Neighborhood changes

With the moratorium, Yrarrázaval worries that the pause on industrial activities would result in home prices and rental prices skyrocketing in the area.

Yrarrázaval was instrumental in pushing for policies in the densely populated Logan and Lacy neighborhoods to address lead contamination. They are two of the oldest neighborhoods in the city whose residents are predominantly Latino. In pushing for the environmental policies, she also pushed for the inclusion of a clause to prevent rent hikes so residents can stay in their homes.

Idalia Rios, who lives in the Lacy neighborhood, said some of the zoning changes are not always designed for residents in the neighborhood and some of the shifts have resulted in residents leaving the city and even the county. In the building she lives in, she said, around 70% of the neighbors are new because long term residents have since moved.

She says there used to be a Northgate Gonzalez Market close to the Lacy neighborhood but some zoning changes resulted in the market being torn down and replaced with a luxury project.

“A luxury project, it doesn't benefit the low or extremely low income residents that we have in that area,” she said.

Gema Suarez, works at El Centro Cultural de Mexico which aims to create alternative spaces connecting residents with communities in Mexico. Suarez said the city, especially the downtown area, is a “sanctuary in terms of culture.” When developers removed a long standing carousel popular with local families in downtown’s Fiesta Marketplace, it resulted in Mexican run businesses moving out of the area.

“We want to make sure that those developments are made for the people who live here,” she said.