New O.C. Equity Report reveals challenges, a path forward
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Equity has been a popular buzz word in recent weeks, either as a standalone word or the middle letter in DEI.
The Orange County Grantmakers, a nonprofit community of philanthropists, had long planned to release the 2025 Orange County Equity Profile this week.
The fact that it feels more relevant than ever doesn’t bother O.C. Grantmakers executive director Taryn Palumbo at all.
“Things are changing rapidly, sometimes by the hour,” Palumbo told attendees of a special release event at the Cove, on the campus of UC Irvine, on Thursday. “Did we plan on releasing an equity report this week when we decided to pick this date a year ago? No, we did not. But this report and its timing, however you perceive it, whatever your political affiliations are and whatever your understanding is of equity, is an opportunity for us all to remember that equity is not about the process. Equity is about the outcomes we’re trying to achieve for the community.”
The event was titled “The Path Ahead: OC’s Roadmap to Equity.” Professor Manuel Pastor, the director of the USC Equity Research Institute, gave a presentation on the equity profile, which is available on the O.C. Grantmakers website.
Palumbo then moderated a discussion on housing, income inequality and other key issues with UC Irvine professors Walter Nicholls, Carolina Valdivia and Dara Sorkin.
Finally, representatives from several community collaboratives, like the Orange County Economic Justice Initiative and the Orange County Black Solidarity Network, were given time to address the crowd.
Palumbo said most if not all of the collaboratives were not around five years ago, indicating how much has changed since O.C. Grantmakers conducted the first O.C. Equity Profile in 2019, in partnership with USC and with the support of the St. Joseph Fund.
“I just feel like we can be so demoralized right now with some of the challenges that seem like they’re facing us,” Palumbo said in an interview following the event. “We need to be reminded that we’re already doing the work and we can keep it going, and that’s not going to be impacted by how you label equity. What’s important is what is happening on the ground. We’re working to address food insecurity, hate crimes, health disparities. It’s happening, and so as long as we continue to do the work, we’ll be fine.”
Pastor highlighted three words that he feels are three characteristics of equity — opportunity, ownership and oneness.
“When we are shortchanging kids, particularly kids of color, at our schools, we are shipwrecking our economic future,” Pastor told attendees. “When we over-incarcerate, we are tossing away talent that could be used to generate economic growth. Too often, equity gets cast just as a fairness issue rather than a prosperity issue.
“The way that our fates are intertwined has been seared in our consciousness in Los Angeles in recent weeks with the fires.”
The report shows that Orange County, home to about 3.2 million people, has a diverse population, ranking 20th among the 150 largest regions in the United States in that category. Between 1980 and 2022, the county shifted from 78% white residents to 38% white, with Latinos now representing 34% of the population and Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders at 22%.
Currently in Orange County, native-born Latinos outnumber immigrant Latinos by two to one.
“It’s no longer really immigration that’s driving the change,” Pastor said. “It’s the sons and daughters of those immigrants that arrived in an earlier period. More people are settling in and making their lives here.”
About one in eight Orange County residents is either undocumented or living with an undocumented family member. Huntington Beach recently made news by naming itself a nonsanctuary city and suing the state over its sanctuary law. On the other side, Santa Ana declared itself a sanctuary city in 2017, and current Mayor Valerie Amezcua has affirmed her support of that.
Speaking on wealth, Pastor highlighted that Black and Latino residents in the county have lower median incomes than other racial groups. As a whole, he said about 25% of the income in the United States goes to 1% of the population, the highest that percentage has ever been.
“Incomes for those at the top have gone steadily up, and gone up higher in O.C.,” Pastor said. “Incomes at the bottom have gone down, and they’ve gone down more in O.C. There’s inequality in the nation, and you all are experiencing it on steroids.”
Housing is another key component of the report. Palumbo asked the panelists for their thoughts on the numbers, including that a majority of renters (56%) are considered rent-burdened. This means that they’re spending more than 30% of their income on rent.
Nicholls, the chair of the UCI department of urban planning and public policy, said the percentage of renters in the county has increased from 38% in 2000 to about 44% today.
He noted that the state Legislature has passed 18 major pieces of legislation in recent years in order to streamline production of homes, but only one was passed benefiting renters in that time.
“In another 10 years, we expect to be a majority renter county, which is quite important,” Nicholls said. “When we’re thinking about housing policy … it’s important to think about how we’re going to make home ownership affordable for more people, more equitable. But also, as we do move into becoming more of a renter society, how are we going to provide greater protections for those folks?”
Per the equity profile, if rent burden were eliminated, disposable income for impacted households would increase on average by $11,000. That would equal $3.4 billion more in disposable income countywide.
Pastor ended his presentation by stressing that community, government and the private sector need to all work together to create a better Orange County.
“That’s what can defend us from fires and a bad future,” he said. “That’s what can help us rebuild. The fact that we cannot see how those are threaded together, the fact that equity has become a hot buzzword rather than a common goal, that speaks poorly on us and our inability to thread that needle for a common destiny.”
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