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struggling to remain housed. This is especially true for the 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. This means that the City has exceeded its above moderate income RHNA allocation by 2,677 percent, per the City's RHNA Annual Progress Report submitted to the CA Department of Housing and Community Development. With above moderate average rents of $2000 - $4000 in these developments, none of these above market rent units are affordable to most of Santa Ana's working families. Since 80% of renters in Santa Ana fall into the moderate, low and very low income category and 84 percent of residents hold low-income occupations that pay less than $53,500 per year, the majority of these new rental housing units are not available to address the housing needs of most working families in Santa Ana. Santa Ana's households are predominantly families comprising 81% of households. These households are also rent burdened and live in overcrowded conditions. Proposed Project The proposed Northgate Gonzalez Real Estate project fails to help address the housing needs for lower income families that live in the surrounding Lacy neighborhood community, one of the neighborhoods with a high population of lower income families. This development needs to provide affordable housing to help address existing housing needs and mitigate the gentrification and displacement that its project will create. The Northgate Gonzalez Real Estate team cannot claim that this development will serve the Santa Ana residents without including housing that will be affordable to families with extremely -low and very -low incomes. Vecindario Lacy en Accion is in strong opposition to this project as proposed and we urge you to reject this project until on -site affordable housing is included. The proposed project needs to articulate how the developer and its partners will help address the critical affordable housing needs of residents in the Lacy neighborhood and in the City of Santa Ana. Sincerely, Vecindario Lacy en Accion (VeLA)