Santa Ana has spent millions to buy land near downtown - OCRegister
SANTA ANA - Carol Blair remembers when there was more to her old neighborhood than boarded-up houses and dirt lots. She remembers when children played ball in the street and parents leaned from their windows to chat.
It wasn't economic hardship that emptied this neighborhood, just east of downtown. It wasn't a crime wave or bad schools that chased away the families. No, this patchwork of vacant land littered with empty bottles and crumpled food wrappers was the work of the city.
Santa Ana has bulldozed dozens of homes and uprooted scores of mostly low-income people here, pursuing a vision of urban renewal that has instead gutted entire blocks. The city has spent more than $22 million in the past decade to create nothing out of the something that Carol Blair remembers.
A review of hundreds of pages of city documents by The Orange County Register found that some landowners made huge profits in their dealings with the city. Others signed away their homes only after the city warned that it could condemn their properties and force them out if they didn't cooperate.