Quarterly Newsletter - Q1 2020

Getting by With Help from Our Friends

Let’s start our latest issue by addressing the elephant in the room: COVID-19. Almost overnight, all the lives in our community were disrupted as comfortable familiarity gave way to an utterly unprecedented crisis. The conditions may be alien, but our commitment to our residents is stronger than ever.

Even under normal circumstances, our communities make up some of Irvine’s most vulnerable populations, and we won’t let up when their need is greater than ever. Over the past two months, we’ve been thrilled to see that our zeal is shared by the community, which has come together to help each other wherever the need arises.

A great example of the unique challenges presented by the pandemic – and the teamwork that can overcome them – can be seen in the continued construction of our next community, Salerno.
Even though the City of Irvine has had to shut down many operations, it has established special protocols for inspection of affordable housing projects to continue. Of course, construction couldn’t continue without workers, which introduced an even greater problem.

Out of respect for the health and safety of those who continue to raise our new community from the ground up, we’re having all crew drive out to the Salerno site individually, rather than carpooling. This brought the number of cars that needed to park near the property from 30 to almost 100.
To avoid clogging the streets, we called on our friends at the Irvine Unified School District (IUSD), which graciously agreed to allow our workers to park at the district bus yard. This has allowed work to continue smoothly and safely, without any undue impact to the surrounding areas. Of course, our workers are wearing masks and keeping safe distances, whenever possible.

We’d like to thank both the City and the IUSD, and commend our regular community partners: Families Forward, South County Outreach and Second Harvest Food Bank, all of whom are continuing their excellent work in the community during this time of dire need.

It’s one thing to say that “we’re all in this together,” but Irvine has thoroughly proved it. We’re proud to be a part of this strong community and all it does to ensure our residents can also be proud to call it “home.”

Few people in Irvine have the rich perspective of the city held by ICLT Vice Chair Leon M. Napper, who has been a proud, active resident of Irvine for nearly as long as the city has existed.

The only love Leon’s had longer than Irvine is for his wife Margaret, who he’ll have been married to 50 years in June. The couple moved to the city in 1973, just two years after it was incorporated. In that time, Leon has seen the city grow from a humble town with one traffic light to a thriving city – trading bountiful orange groves for towering high rises in the process.

As the city took shape and mapped out its general plan, Leon joined a group of six other residents called “Irvine Tomorrow” – also collectively known as “The Irvine Seven” – to petition for the city’s housing element to include meaningful housing strategies that would accommodate all economic segments of the community. Drawing on Leon’s past experience working with HUD (where he helped to establish new communities in Maryland, Minneapolis and Virginia,) the group was successful in their efforts to ensure Irvine’s housing element started out on the right foot.

This early success helped lay the groundwork for affordable housing in Irvine as we know it, but Leon remained dedicated to his new home through a life of endless service. He said that for how far the city has come, it has much further to go when it comes to affordable housing, and he intends to be a part of the solution through his work with the ICLT.

The most critical aspect of affordable housing, Leon said, is its ability to stabilize families. He remembers a time when a sensible housing payment worked out to 18 percent of a family’s income, but many today pay upwards of 50 percent of their income on rent alone. With those kinds of bills and no disposable income, it becomes hard for these families to lead fulfilling lives. But, if affordable housing can bring that payment down to even 30 percent, suddenly that family is able to not just live, but live well, Leon said.

“For Irvine, I applaud everybody. We have about 5,000 affordable units in the city. It’s not enough, but it has made an impact,” Leon said. “Hopefully, we can still do better, and more.”

With work continuing on Salerno, we’re happy to announce that the interest list for its initial residents will open on May 1, 2020.

Our latest community, set to open to residents later this year, will offer 80 homes for some of Irvine’s most vulnerable residents, including 15 units for veterans, 10 units for individuals with developmental disabilities and 10 units for those at risk of homelessness, all specially set aside for those groups.

Once open, the interest list will accept sign-ups for a minimum of 60 days, per City of Irvine regulations. The City also requires that the initial residents be determined through a lottery system, with names randomly pulled from the interest list. In other words, the ability to rent a Salerno unit will not be determined on a first-come-first-served basis. Those whose names are pulled in  the lottery will go through a rigorous qualification procedure to ensure that the criteria is met; the qualification details can be found here.

Relevant information on the process, and forms for getting on the interest list, will be posted on our website as available – stay tuned in the coming weeks for more.

There’s plenty more to look forward to from ICLT, even once Salerno is finished. Our next project, Native Spring, is sailing along toward its groundbreaking. Set to be built north of Irvine Boulevard, this 68-unit townhome community will bring exciting affordable homeownership opportunities to first-time homebuyers in Irvine.

Native Spring will include 16 two-bedroom homes, 36 three-bedroom homes and 16 four-bedroom homes at estimated sale prices of around $350,000, $390,000 and $420,000 respectively.

More information will be posted to our social media and our website as available. We look forward to this latest deepening of Irvine’s affordability, and we hope you do, too.