Orange County Register: Katie Porter Lives In Subsidized ‘Glass House’

The Orange County Register writes, “[Katie] Porter is throwing stones while living in a glass house.”

There is a long wait for a home in the University of California Irvine’s subsidized housing community where Katie Porter lives. Even though Porter is on unpaid leave from the university and no longer meets the requirements to live in the community, she still resides there. 

Why does Porter think the rules don’t apply to her?

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Katie Porter Lives In Subsidized ‘Glass House’

Editorial Board

Orange County Register

September 13, 2022

U.S. Rep. Katie Porter, the progressive Democratic firebrand who represents South Orange County, has long decried an economic system that lets the “wealthy and well-connected … live in one reality while the rest of us live in another.” Yet an Associated Press investigation suggests Porter is throwing stones while living in a glass house.

Not a literal glass house, of course. Porter actually lives in a four-bedroom, 2,600-square-foot stucco home on the UC Irvine campus. Redfin estimates its full-market value at $1.9 million. There’s nothing wrong with wealthy people living in nice digs, nor is the home unusual given Orange County’s outsized values. But Porter apparently lives on that block because of her influential connections.

Prior to winning a seat in Congress, Porter was a $258,000 a year professor at the University of California. Per AP, she purchased the home in 2011 for $523,000 as part of a subsidized housing program designed to help university academics afford to live nearby. So far, so good. She had every right to participate in the program, which caps sale prices after recipients leave UCI.

Run by the nonprofit Irvine Campus Housing Authority, the program requires owners to move out after they conclude their university employment – although UCI retirees may remain residents. There’s a long waiting list of active UCI professors who want to live in University Hills, yet Porter continues to live there even though she has taken a leave of absence from the university nearly four years ago.

The housing is specifically for UCI employees, but AP added that university officials “signed off on two separate one-year periods of leave that enabled her to keep her house.” Law school Vice Dean Chris Whytock, who has donated to Porter’s congressional campaign, “wrote a memo … suggesting that there are no limits on how long such an arrangement could continue.”

Porter’s campaign told AP it had no knowledge of Whytock’s action. Nevertheless, Porter has proven the accuracy of her campaign rhetoric. Wealthy Americans with excellent connections get to reside in different realities (and ZIP codes) than everybody else.

Torunn Sinclair

National Press Secretary

NRCC 

@TorunnSinclair