online petition<\/a> opposing the project launched the following day and gathered hundreds of signatures.<\/p>\n ![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1768598888_335_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
The grounds of Turning Point Fellowship, on West Alton Avenue in Santa Ana, were eyed for an all-affordable townhouse development. <\/p>\n
(James Carbone)<\/p>\n
Being responsive to complaints about parking, Habitat OC pledged improvements.<\/p>\n
Velma de la Rosa, Habitat OC\u2019s vice president of housing and community development, emailed Bacerra and Asst. City Manager Minh Thai after the open house.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile concerns about neighborhood parking and traffic were clearly voiced, they were framed more as long-standing infrastructure issues than objections to new affordable housing,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n
De la Rosa expressed optimism about moving the project forward and participating in a June council meeting.<\/p>\n
Bacerra asked City Manager Alvaro Nu\u00f1ez why Habitat OC would make such a statement. <\/p>\n
Thai warned De la Rosa that including city staff and elected officials \u201cin ongoing strategic and planning communications may have the unintended consequence of affecting or appearing to effect the city\u2019s neutrality\u201d ahead of any public hearings.<\/p>\n
But the project never made it to City Council.<\/p>\n
Days after the open house, Matt Cody, an attorney specializing in real estate litigation, sent Brown and Asst. City Atty. Andrea Garcia-Miller an email confirming a meeting at which the status of Habitat OC\u2019s negotiations and negative feedback from community members about the project had been discussed. <\/p>\n
He included a risk assessment Brown had requested in communications released by the city in response to a TimesOC public records request.<\/p>\n
Cody noted Habitat OC followed the proposal process in doing public outreach in anticipation of receiving a pre-commitment loan letter from the city, which it spent $88,000 negotiating.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe practical reality is that Habitat was required to engage in the process and undertook a significant commitment, which the city was completely aware of during the entire process,\u201d Cody wrote.<\/p>\n
He further advised that Santa Ana\u2019s bid award did not absolve it from a potential claim and warned the city manager\u2019s office and community development agency should have a clear understanding of affordable housing fund policies, as deviating from them creates the risk of appearing to have \u201cchanged the rules.\u201d <\/p>\n
Cody suggested it wouldn\u2019t be in Habitat OC\u2019s \u201clong-term interests\u201d to sue the city and noted the risk of the claim could be low. <\/p>\n
In September, months after the open house, Santa Ana withdrew Habitat OC\u2019s bid award.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve never seen a project get killed that was enthusiastically and unanimously approved by each of the commissions,\u201d Taormina said, \u201cand then vaporized in front of us without having a formal chance to go to the Planning Commission, to go to City Council and a formal hearing process.\u201d<\/p>\n
The leases for Turning Point Fellowship and the Faith Community Church of Santa, Taormina\u2019s two on-site tenants, expire at the end of the year, but Taormina has pledged to renew them until he understands what is going to happen \u2014 or not happen \u2014 at the property site with regard to housing.<\/p>\n
Instead of voting on the Alton project, council members debated a policy change on affordable housing funds in November to prevent the city from issuing pre-loan commitment letters if a project does not align with the its general plan and zoning code.<\/p>\n
Affordable housing advocates from the Kennedy Commission, Habitat OC and People for Housing opposed the revision and claimed it would hinder future projects.<\/p>\n
Most council members also opposed the change.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a solution looking for a problem,\u201d said Councilmember Thai Viet Phan. \u201cIf there\u2019s a project that requires a general plan amendment, it comes back before this council.\u201d <\/p>\n
Bacerra argued that the policy change was necessary in the interest of impartiality.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not bureaucratic, it\u2019s fairness,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Councilmembers voted 6-1 to reject the policy change.<\/p>\n
Even with existing policy remaining intact, the debate deflated Valentine\u2019s hopes that the West Alton Avenue project could get back on track in Santa Ana.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the city manager had not said this was a dead-on-arrival project, we would probably be pursuing some conversations about undoing the rescission,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Instead, Valentine is mulling ways to close the funding gap without collaborating with the city, a move that would likely delay the townhouse project by a few years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love this project so much that I\u2019m trying to figure out how we can do it without the city\u2019s money,\u201d he said. \u201cI can\u2019t think of a time when we\u2019ve been awarded funding and then had it removed. Why is this not a good project? To this day, I still don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The quiet grounds of two church congregations in Santa Ana seemed poised to provide a rare opportunity for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":136744,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[380,163,165,164,15327,10800,1409,69569,69571,69565,1336,69568,69566,69567,2426,1506,338,69570],"class_list":["post-136743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-affordable-housing","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-bid","tag-change","tag-city","tag-city-council-approval","tag-city-manager-alvaro-nunez","tag-habitat-oc","tag-housing-crisis","tag-matt-cody","tag-michael-valentine","tag-open-house","tag-parking","tag-project","tag-santa-ana","tag-velma-de-la-rosa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}