Anaheim City Council approved on April 26 a $96 million settlement for new affordable housing following a dispute over the sale of the Angel Stadium.
The 5 to 2 vote—with Councilmen Avelino Valencia and Jose Moreno voting against the settlement—allows for the city to move forward with the sale to Angels baseball owner Arte Moreno’s company SRB Management.
The agreement would require the city to build affordable housing in the city within the next five years. Additionally, the city will also commit an additional $27 million for the construction of nearly 466 on-site units for low-and low-income households, specifically at the Angels Stadium site.
The nearly $123 million will provide over 1,000 affordable units, according to the California Attorney General Rob Bonta.
“Enforcing state housing laws is an important component of this work, and we are proud to have reached a resolution in this case that will bring much-needed housing—but especially affordable housing—to the Anaheim community,” Bonta said in a statement.
The settlement comes after the city violated what’s known as the Surplus Land Act when it sold the stadium in 2019 to Angels baseball team owner Arte Moreno’s company.
The Surplus Land Act declares that public land put up for sale must be made available for affordable housing developers to place a bid before others.
The city was cited by the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development for failing to entertain bids before selling the 150-acre property, among other zoning issues.
The city continuously disagreed with the violation, but ultimately officials agreed to a settlement.
Councilmen Moreno and Valencia urged the council to take more time to review the settlement that was received 24 hours before the Tuesday meeting.
“I just don’t feel comfortable with how fast the settlement is moving forward and being pushed through,” Valencia said while insisting city taxpayers should have had input. “This ramrod of this settlement is unfortunate, because it’s one of the largest decisions that we’ve made in recent history.”
However, a majority of council members insisted on proceeding.
Before the vote, the public weighed in on the issue.
Grant Henninger, a resident of Anaheim and former planning commissioner, insisted that $100 million towards affordable housing would not provide nearly a thousand units.
“There’s no requirement in this [settlement] that the city leverage its funds in any way to ensure that the most number of affordable housing units get built in Anaheim,” Henninger said during an April 26 council meeting. “$100 million sounds like a lot of money, but it only builds less than 200 units of affordable housing.”
