The high cost of housing isn\u2019t helping Orange County attract or retain residents, though other factors may be weighing on the area \u2013 and all of California \u2013 according to new state population data.<\/p>\n
Data released by the\u00a0California Department of Finance\u00a0this month shows that OC lost nearly 12,000 residents last year, a 0.4% decline.<\/p>\n
OC\u2019s population stood at 3,163,696 at the start of 2026; it remains California\u2019s third-largest county, trailing Los Angeles (9.8 million, down 0.6% year-over-year) and San Diego (3.3 million, up 0.1%).<\/p>\n
The local population declined faster than the state. California lost about 54,000 people last year, a 0.1% decline from 2025. It\u2019s the first year-over-year population drop for the state in four years.<\/p>\n
California currently has nearly 39.6 million residents.<\/p>\n
The Department of Finance chalked up last year\u2019s losses to \u201crestrictive federal policy changes\u201d that cut legal international migration to the state by more than half.<\/p>\n
Without those restrictions, California\u2019s population would have increased by 66,000 last year, according to the state, whose population data is used by local areas to calculate annual appropriations.<\/p>\n
Housing costs also are having an impact, according to a March report from\u00a0California Policy Lab, whose data showed the \u201caverage mover from California relocates to a neighborhood where monthly housing costs are $672 lower than in the community they left.\u201d<\/p>\n
Local population declines were seen across Orange County last year.<\/p>\n
Of OC\u2019s 34 cities, only\u00a0Stanton\u00a0saw an uptick in population (2%, to 41,415), driven by a 3% boost in housing stock as new apartment complexes opened.<\/p>\n
Anaheim, OC\u2019s largest city with 343,433 residents, saw a 0.1% decline last year. No. 2\u00a0Irvine\u00a0(317,744) and No. 3\u00a0Santa Ana\u00a0(312,808) were flat year-over-year.<\/p>\n
OC saw a 0.5% boost in housing units last year, to 1.17 million homes and apartments.<\/p>\n
While most of the increases were in the form of new apartment complexes, Irvine\u2019s 814 increase in single-family homes placed it No. 8 among all cities in the state last year.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0City of Irvine\u00a0could use more homes and home sales to beef up its balance sheet.
Reports in April noted that the city faces a $6 million budget deficit this fiscal year, with the shortfall potentially rising to $47 million over the next five years.<\/p>\n
Staffing is a key factor; full-time employees in the city have grown by about 30% since 2020, to more than 1,100.<\/p>\n
A recent\u00a0Voice of OC\u00a0report noted that \u201cwhile city leaders spent around $139 million in the 2020-21 fiscal year on staff salaries, they\u2019re now set to spend over $211 million total next year, according to the city budget, an over 50% increase.\u201d<\/p>\n
Officials for Irvine, which was named the most fiscally stable city in America in 2021, also note that the city is feeling the pinch from \u201cdecreases in transfer tax revenue due to slowing home sales,\u201d with properties staying on the market longer than average.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The high cost of housing isn\u2019t helping Orange County attract or retain residents, though other factors may be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":211783,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164],"class_list":["post-310557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310557","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=310557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310557\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/211783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}