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December 15, 2020 Mayor Sarmiento and City Council City of Santa Ana 20 Civic Center Plaza Santa Ana, CA 92701 LA—nNO RE: 11A OPPOSITION: 4th and Mortimer (Northgate) Mixed — Use Development AHE`F CH Dear Mayor and City Councilmembers: LJ Latino Health Access (LHA) works with community residents to support physical, emotional, 450 West Fourth Street and social wellbeing. Our goal is to facilitate opportunities for residents to take ownership of Suite 130 their wellbeing, including by participating civically in decisions that affect their health like the Santa Ana, CA 92701 development of projects that will directly impact them. We urge you today to stop the Ph: 714-542-7792 process of the development on 41h and Mortimer (Northgate) and listen to the community's Fax: 714-542-4853 feedback. We at LHA have partnered with Northgate Gonzalez in a variety of projects to latinohealthaccess.org bring resources to our community, and are extremely grateful fortheir partnership and dedication. In this instance, we would like to see the developers listen to and incorporate the community's input into the project in a meaningful way before moving forward. Community Input The last in person community meeting for this development was the Sunshine Ordinance Meeting held on August 29, 2018; there was a large community presence with nearly 100 Santa Ana residents in attendance. The majority of the residents in attendance were of the Lacy neighborhood and live a walking distance from the proposed project site. Atthis meeting there was overwhelming community opposition to the proposed project as presented. Residents expressed that the proposed development was inconsistent with the needs of the neighborhood. The large residential development would replace their fresh food source, Northgate Gonzalez Market, with new residential units with rents that are out of reach for the neighborhood's working class community. Residents expressed their community's needs for housing that would be affordable to families with extremely -low and very -low incomes. The proposed development must include affordable housing on site. Santa Ana Community Needs The City of Santa Ana is a renter majority city and despite the City's progress towards meeting its Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) allocation for very low and low income housing there continues to be a great need for housing that is affordable to its residents. The current pandemic has increased the economic and housing pressures on low- income families in Santa Ana. As incomes are decreasing and jobs are being lost, many low income families are struggling to remain housed. This is especially true forthe majority of Santa Ana's low-income households that are suffering with the impacts of housing cost and economic uncertainty. While the city has seen increased production of affordable housing it has not been enough to address the past deficits and growing needs for affordable housing based on the population's housing needs and incomes of residents in Santa Ana. As an example, according to the City's local data, 80 percent of Santa Ana renters are moderate, low and very low-income renters. Yet the most significant increase of housing has been in the above moderate housing category. The City's above moderate allocation is 90 units for the current RHNA planning period. To date, the City has approved 2,409 above moderate income units. PREVENTION EDUCATION ACTION