The Santiago GHAD Assessment Just Became a Permanent Line on Your Anaheim Hills Tax Bill

You're three weeks from closing on a house near Serrano Avenue in Anaheim Hills when your title company flags a line item you don't recognize on the preliminary report. It's not a lien in the usual sense, not an HOA fee, and not something your lender's disclosure checklist explains well. It's a Santiago Geologic Hazard Abatement District assessment, and if you're buying or selling one of the roughly 305 parcels in this pocket of east Anaheim, that line item just changed in a way that matters for your transaction.

Here's the short version. This assessment used to be temporary. As of August 2025, it isn't anymore.

What you're actually looking at

The Santiago GHAD was formed in 1999 under a City of Anaheim resolution, six years after the 1993 Santiago Landslide sent earth moving down the hillside near Avenida de Santiago and forced roughly 50 homes to evacuate. The fix that followed wasn't cosmetic. The city installed a dewatering system, a network of wells and drains that pulls groundwater out of the hillside before it can saturate the soil and reactivate the slide. Today that system runs 87 drain lines and 37 wells, monitored by 15 gauges tracking slope movement and groundwater levels, and it removes about 15 million gallons of water a year.

For two decades, none of this touched a homeowner's tax bill. A legal settlement gave the GHAD roughly $3.5 million to invest, with the expectation that investment income alone would fund dewatering operations forever. Low interest rates ate into that plan. By late 2018 the fund had shrunk to about $1.4 million, and by 2023 the district was warning that it would run dry entirely.

The vote that flipped everything

Property owners inside the GHAD boundary approved an emergency two-year assessment in July 2023, a stopgap meant to keep the pumps running while the district applied for federal disaster mitigation funding through FEMA and CalOES. That measure was explicitly temporary. It bought time, not permanence.

Two years later, the district asked owners to approve something different: an assessment with no end date. The first attempt failed.

The May 2025 measure, built on a budget of $329,679, went down. A revised version, adopted by the GHAD board on June 12, 2025 and put to a public hearing at the East Anaheim Community Center on August 4, 2025, passed with a budget of $349,679. That's the version now in effect.

What "permanent" actually means here

This isn't a rounding difference from the 2023 stopgap. The new assessment is levied starting with fiscal year 2025/2026, appears on the county property tax bill, and continues every year going forward with no sunset date. Each December, the amount adjusts based on the change in the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim Consumer Price Index, so the number on your bill this year won't be the number on your bill in five years.

There's a real difference between a fee your HOA can vote to end and a special district assessment tied to your parcel in perpetuity, adjusted annually to inflation, with the state constitution's Proposition 218 as the only mechanism to unwind it, which requires another property owner vote the district would have to initiate.

The GHAD is also still pursuing that federal mitigation grant, which could eventually reduce how much dewatering the hillside needs. But that funding hasn't been confirmed as awarded, and the district's own public timeline treats construction on any long-term fix as conditional on money that may or may not arrive. Buyers should not assume this assessment disappears anytime soon.

Why your number won't match your neighbor's

The GHAD's boundary is drawn larger than the actual footprint of the 1993 landslide. Some parcels sit directly within the slide mass and would suffer real damage if groundwater levels rose again. Others sit nearby, inside the district but outside the zone that would take direct hits. The engineer's report behind this assessment prices that difference: parcels within the landslide receive greater special benefit from the dewatering system and are assessed more, while parcels on the outer edge of the boundary are assessed less.

Under the 2023 emergency assessment, per-parcel amounts ranged from about $380 to $2,300 a year depending on the property. The new permanent assessment uses the same proximity-based method, so expect a similarly wide spread rather than a flat per-house fee. Two houses on the same block can carry noticeably different numbers.

What to verify before you remove contingencies

If you're under contract on a property inside this boundary, a few calls are worth making before your contingency period closes.

• Ask your title company whether the specific assessed amount for that APN is listed on the preliminary report, or whether you need to request it separately from the GHAD.
• Contact the district manager directly. The GHAD is administered by ENGEO Incorporated in Irvine, and questions about a specific parcel's assessment history and current amount go through that office rather than the city or an HOA.
• Confirm the assessment is a GHAD line item and not conflated with a Mello-Roos district or an HOA due on the closing statement. All three can appear on the same tax bill and they are not the same thing.
• Ask when the December CPI adjustment last applied, so you know whether the number you're seeing reflects this fiscal year or an older figure.
• If you're financing, ask your lender whether the recurring assessment is factored into your debt-to-income calculation the way property taxes are.

None of this should be treated as legal or tax advice. It's due diligence, the same category as pulling a preliminary title report or ordering a pest inspection, just specific to this pocket of Anaheim Hills.

If you're selling on Serrano or Avenida de Santiago

Sellers inside the GHAD boundary should expect informed buyers to ask about this, especially now that the assessment has shifted from a two-year measure to a permanent one. Having the current per-parcel figure ready, along with a plain explanation of what the GHAD does and doesn't cover, saves a round of back-and-forth during escrow. The GHAD does not maintain general open space, handle fire fuel clearance, or function as a homeowners association. Its job is narrow: keep the groundwater down and the hillside stable.

A few quick answers

Is this the same as Mello-Roos? No. Mello-Roos is a Community Facilities District typically tied to new infrastructure in newer developments. The Santiago GHAD is a geologic hazard abatement district formed specifically to manage landslide risk from a documented 1993 event, and it operates under separate state law.

Does every Anaheim Hills home have this assessment? No. It applies only to parcels inside the roughly 305-property GHAD boundary around Serrano Avenue and Avenida de Santiago, not to Anaheim Hills broadly.

Will this show up automatically when I search listings online? Not reliably. It's a county tax roll item tied to specific APNs rather than a standard field on most listing platforms, which is exactly why it's worth confirming directly with the title company or the district manager rather than assuming a portal listing will surface it.

Who do I call with questions about a specific address? The district is managed by ENGEO Incorporated in Irvine. Contact information and current assessment documents are posted on the Santiago GHAD's own site and on the City of Anaheim's GHAD information page.

Buying or selling on these particular streets isn't more complicated than any other Anaheim Hills transaction, it just has one more document worth reading closely before you sign. If you're weighing a property in this pocket of the hills, or anywhere else in Anaheim Hills, Ryan Salloum can walk you through what a specific parcel's disclosures actually mean before you're locked into a contract. Reach out for a free home valuation and a straight answer on what you're really buying into.