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~UANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVe. DEMAND The demand for housing denotes the people side of the housing market. It refers to the characteristics and behavior of the more than 183,000 persons who occupy the Santa Aha hous- ing stock. About 86 percent of our people in Santa Ana and 89 percent in Orange'County are conventional families consist- ing of married people and their offspring. The rest are com- posed of single persons, unmarried adults, divorced and widowed people, and a currently small but growing number of individuals who are members of primary groups like communes which do not fit the standard categories of thepast. In their countless diversity, these households and the persons attracted to Santa Aha in the future produce.the demand for dwellings. Conventionally, the housing market is divided into sub- markets according to certain key characteristics on the demand side. Three of these dominate all discussion: income, size of the household group, and tenure. .(Actually, the last cham- acteristic which separates people into renters and homeowners separates equally sharply the housing stock into owned and rented dwellings, so perhaps it is more accurately an aspect of the latter.) Other dimensions used in discussing demand include such things as social class and life-cycle (people's housing needs and preferences change as they become adults, convention- ally marry, have children, see them grow up, then themselves- age and die). This section of Chapter V defines some of the satisfac- tions sought by the multifarious consumers of housing and focuses attention on their preferences and behavior and on the forces which shape them. At the aggregate level, the demand for housing in Santa Aha has obediently followed the extra- ordinary demographic changes which have flowed across older cities in Orange County like a series of tidal Waves. The crisis in the Santa Aha and Orange County Housing - Market Areas has passed beyond a mere matter of the number of available units. It has become a social and economic crisis, as well as a numbers problem. ProsPects for the future are dim. Homeownership is becoming a luxury available to a smaller and smaller segment of the residents of both Santa Aha and Orange County. As illus- trated by previous statistics, approximately S0 percent of the families presently living in Santa Aha are unable to afford to purchase a $30,000 home under present housing expenditures and conventional finance requirements. At the same time, rents rise higher and higher, so that adequately-sized rental units are less likely to be a financially-favorable alternative to home ownershiB. O0008t