Margaret Staley draws $47,000 a year as a postal supervisor, but says the only home she can afford to live in belongs to her parents.
"When you make this kind of money, and you can't even afford an apartment," the Anaheim resident said, "there is something wrong."
A growing group of people in California have become priced out of the real estate -- and even the rental -- market. As housing costs continue to soar, the frustration has spread beyond the working poor, affecting teachers, police officers, firefighters and other professionals.
And pressure is growing on cities and counties to accommodate them.
"I'd like the City Council to help make laws that require every developer to provide affordable housing," said Staley, who recently urged her city's leaders to require lower-income units in a planned 2,500-unit housing project.
Indeed, in Anaheim and many other cities, including Los Angeles, council members are drafting or proposing ordinances to assure that some units in new residential projects will be affordable to service workers and public servants.
"We're already to the point of a crisis situation," said Anaheim Councilman Richard Chavez, who with Councilwoman Lorri Galloway is pushing for the new housing policy. "In the last five years, we've added another park at Disneyland [California Adventure] and a slew of hotels.... Who's going to wash the windows, baby-sit the children, mow the lawn? Where are we expecting all these people to live?"
The strategy calls for cities to require residential developers to include reduced-priced apartments or houses as a condition of approval for their market-rate housing.
Under benchmarks commonly used by planners and housing authorities, a home is considered affordable if a household that makes 120% or less of an area's median income doesn't need to spend more than a third of its earnings on housing. The vast majority of units built under such ordinances are apartments, because they are easier to finance and yield more units per acre of land
Developers complain that "inclusionary housing" policies hurt their profitability and increase housing costs for other buyers and renters.
"Regulations don't build homes," said Michael LeBlanc, a senior vice president with the Irvine Co., one of Southern California's largest developers. "Land and [construction permits and approvals] and financing builds housing."
