Since World War II, probably no area has so typified the quality suburban lifestyle as Orange County. In many ways, Orange County has been the inspirational model for suburbs that now surround virtually all urban cores from Western Europe to Canada, Japan and Australia. It extends even to the developing world. A major detached housing development, one hour into the Beijing suburbs named itself "Orange County." The houses sold so fast that the Beijing media called it the "Orange Storm."
But there is an ominous storm building in Orange County, the result of a Sustainable Communities Strategy adopted the by the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG). Many Southlanders have little awareness of SCAG or its functions. SCAG is the metropolitan planning organization for Orange, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino and Imperial counties. SCAG has substantial authority under federal and state laws in transportation planning and, more recently, has been granted broad power by the state in land use planning. SCAG is governed by an 83-member "regional council," made up local elected officials, though not elected to their SCAG positions. For example, the current SCAG president is Pam O'Connor, who was elected to the city council of Santa Monica.
SCAG's Sustainable Communities Strategy, required under Senate Bill 375 (Steinberg-Sacramento, 2008), which seeks to change Orange County (and the state) radically by forcing future housing to be at many times present densities. A principal purpose of SB375 is to achieve the state's greenhouse gas emission reduction targets.
Under SCAG's Sustainable Communities Strategy, one-third of the new housing built before 2035 will be at 30 or more per acre. This is seven or more times the detached housing densities that are the norm in Orange County. Further, the Sustainable Communities Strategy would also require that approximately 70 percent of new housing be multifamily, rather than detached. Only 30 percent of the new housing could be single-family detached. This would, according to SCAG, achieve "a housing profile to match future housing demand."
Of course, it is no easy thing to predict future housing demand. But the belief that 70 percent will be for multifamily housing rather than single-family housing could be an illusion, because it is radically different from recent market trends.
Data is readily available from the United States Bureau of the Census. According to the 2000 Census, approximately 51 percent of the occupied housing stock in Orange County was detached. The balance, 49 percent, was multifamily housing, from two-family houses to large apartment and condominium buildings. For some time, urban planners have been predicting and even announcing that a shift away from detached housing was occurring and that households were seeking to live in more dense neighborhoods. If this were so, it would be reflected in the trends since 2000, but the data from the last decade shows no such thing.
The overwhelming majority of occupied housing added between 2000 and 2011 was detached, not multifamily. The American Community Survey for 2011 shows that 63 percent housing added in Orange County since 2000 was detached, while only 37 percent was multifamily. Thus, SCAGs planned multifamily housing share is nearly double the market preference indicated in Orange County since 2011. Moreover, the share of new occupied detached housing was even higher throughout the entire SCAG region, at more than 80 percent.
Thus, the evidence of the last decade is that there is shift in housing preferences away from multifamily housing in Orange County, not toward it. Households are also choosing less dense neighborhoods. The latest census tract data from the American Community Survey (2006-2010) indicates that more than 75 percent of the occupied detached housing built since 2000 was in census tracts with a density less than the average density of the Los Angeles – Orange County urban area (7,000 per square mile). There is no shift away from the preference for lower densities.
Further, there is a growing body of evidence that land use policies like those adopted by SCAG are not required to achieve GHG emission reduction targets. A major study by McKinsey & Company (sponsored by environmental and business groups) found that sufficient GHG emission reduction could be achieved without denser housing. Nearly all of the GHG emission reductions in two major reports (Moving Cooler and Driving and the Built Environment) result from improvement in vehicle fuel efficiency, with comparatively little gain from forcing higher density.
The SCAG Sustainable Communities Strategy represents an unnecessary imposition preferences long held dear by the planning community, and nearly the opposite of people's preferences, as evidenced by their behavior in the market. It might be imagined that this radical program was the subject of great controversy among the 83 elected officials serving on the SCAG Regional Council. Not so. In a state often unable to garner sufficient legislative votes to pass the state budget for weeks or even months, the Sustainable Communities Plan was adopted without objection.
The revealed preferences of Orange County households, and those throughout Southern California, indicate no such unanimity.