Affordable Homeownership

The City of Santa Ana is a renter-majority City, where the rising cost of housing is causing displacement of low-income residents.  Many residents who contributed to the creation of THRIVE CLT have faced displacement after 15+ years of renting.  With the right types of support in place, these situations could be prime opportunities for hard working families to attain homeownership. 

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In 2018, Reyna Mendoza, a Santa Ana resident and and active community leader, was given a 60-day eviction notice when her landlord passed away.  The landowner's family had decided to sell the home, without informing Reyna’s family.  She was forced to move out of the home she and her three daughters had rented for over 20 years.  Without funding or programmatic support, many Santa Ana residents like Reyna are missing a vital opportunity to purchase and become homeowners.

 

What is a Tenant Opportunity to Purchase?  

In a Tenant Opportunity to Purchase (TOP), a renter whose home is to be sold, is given a unique opportunity to make a purchase offer and become a homeowner.  This can be applied to Single Family Homes, or Multi-Family buildings, and is growing as a popular strategy to preserve units that might otherwise be lost, for both affordable rentals and homeownership.  The Washington D.C. Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA), “combined with preservation funding, has developed or preserved 16,224 units of affordable housing since 2006.” (LISC, 2023)  In its latest Housing Element Update, The City of Santa Ana included language to explore a “right of first refusal” for tenants and affordable housing agencies, in order to preserve affordable units at risk of becoming market-rate.  THRIVE Santa Ana, the city’s first and only community land trust (CLT) is proposing a Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Program, with funding to support these types of acquisition and preservation strategies.