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Flores, Dora From: mike@tardifsheetmetal.com Sent: Tuesday, October 15, 2024 12:16 PM To: eComment Cc: Bob Adams Subject: For Public Comments - How a state 'justice' law created injustice in Santa Ana Attention: This email originated from outside of City of Santa Ana. Use caution when opening attachments or links. Please distribute this email, and print, as Public Comment to Mayor and City Council members. How a state `justice' law created injustice in Santa Ana By STEVEN GREENHUT I Orange County Register PUBLISHED: October 13, 2024 at 5:07 p.m. SACRAMENTO — Nearly 17 years ago, I penned a feature column for The Orange County Register about Santa Ana's "Renaissance Plan," which was a city idea to drive out 130-plus commercial and industrial businesses and replace them with a high-rise transit -oriented district featuring condos and apartments. The plan also called for revamping downtown. I'm all for high rises, housing construction and downtown improvements — but not in a manner that obliterates people's property rights in the process. As I wrote, "I'd call it the `Forced Gentrification Plan' or `Send Good -Paying Industrial Jobs to Rialto Plan,' or as one person said sardonically, `Remove the Poor Mexicans from Downtown Santa Ana Plan."' I encouraged the public to express outrage. After a fracas ensued, and state Sen. (now congressman) Lou Correa intervened, Santa Ana officials compromised with an "overlay zone" that allowed these businesses to continue operating, even as developers built housing projects around them. A fair solution, it echoed neighboring Anaheim's up -zoning of the light -industrial Platinum Triangle. I hate this term, but this was a "win -win." Time goes on and now Santa Ana is governed by officials who embrace the latest planning trends. The city unveiled its Renaissance Plan at the beginning of a subprime-mortgage crisis and bursting housing bubble. Since then, housing prices have soared and the entire state is struggling with housing shortages. Hence, lawmakers passed myriad laws encouraging and subsidizing multi -family housing construction. The state has also pressured cities (including Santa Ana) that fall short of state -mandated housing goals. Meanwhile in 2017, then -Gov. Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill 1000, which promotes "environmental justice" by, as the attorney general's office explains, "requiring local governments to identify environmental justice communities ... in their jurisdictions and address environmental justice in their general plans." Basically, cities must mitigate pollution in poorer neighborhoods.