Does Stanton Councilmember Alyce Van still live in the council district where she was elected and is now seeking re-election?
That is a question that is percolating among city leaders, community activists and ordinary residents.
Van is a long-time Stanton resident who was elected to the Stanton City Council in November 2020 from District 2 – a race she won by a narrow margin of 98 votes. At the time, she was living in a house on Cedar Street – two short residential blocks from City Hall – where she has been registered since buying it in 2014.
Less than a year later, in September 2021, Van and her husband purchased a home in the eclectic Hynes Estates neighborhood. Although less than a mile apart, the homes are in two different council districts: their new home on Hynes Road is in District 4, which is represented by Van’s colleague, Councilwoman Carol Warren, who is termed out. Her son John Warren is running for the District 4 seat and is considered the strong frontrunner.
This has caused denizens of Stanton’s civic and business world to question whether Van actually lives in District 2 – where Van is running for re-election.
Determining whether a candidate or elected official actually lives where they claim can be tricky. It’s basically an honor system. Election officials do not vet residency claims, and generally take candidates at their word.
The key factor in determining residency is the candidate’s “domicile” i.e. where they maintain their residence. Basically, it is where they actually live and sleep at night.
On the afternoon of July 17, I went to the Cedar Street house where Van is registered and claims to be domiciled. It is a 1,342-square-foot, 4-bedroom home of 1950s vintage, two short blocks from City Hall.
I knocked on the door. No one answered – which doesn’t necessarily mean anything.
I approached an older gentleman who was busy doing something in the front yard of the house across the street. I asked him if he knew Councilwoman Van, and he said yes. I asked if she lived in the house across the street, and he said she did. I asked how often he saw her, and he said every day.
He went on to say there was someone else also living in the house, indicating this person rented one of the bedrooms. He also said Councilmember Van has “another house” in Stanton and spends a lot of time there.
I thanked him for his time, and asked him his name. “Quang,” he said.
“May I ask your last name?” I asked.
“Van,” he replied.
“Are you any relation to Councilwoman Van?”
“Yes, I am her father,” he answered. He told me he lived across the street in the house next to Councilwoman Van’s, and that he had lived there for 30 years. Councilwoman Van purchased that house in 2018, according to county records.
As it turned out, the house where we were speaking belonged to another of his daughters.
Mr. Van pointed to the next door neighbors, and suggested I talk to them. I walked over and introduced myself to an older man and woman and their twenty-something son. They told me they saw Van in the neighborhood regularly.
“She drives a silver plugin Prius,” the son told me.
“I think she drives a silver minivan,” said the older man.
“We see her in both,” they agreed.
They didn’t know she had purchased a house a mile away and were unaware of allegations that she actually lived in the other home, but expressed concern about the charge.
“That’s not good if it’s true,” I was told by the woman.
I then drove over to house Van owns in Hynes Court. When I spoke to Van the next day, she would refer to it as her “rental house.”
More Questions Than Answers
The Hynes Estates tract looks out of place in older, more urban Stanton – more closely resembling a semi-rural county island: no sidewalks, large lots, older homes of varying sizes. There are several horse properties – including Councilwoman Van’s home.
Van’s Hynes Road home is a 4-bedroom, 2,663 square-foot house on a nearly 30,000-square-foot lot. In the back are 10 horse stalls, six horses and a couple of large horse trailers.
The councilwoman’s husband Timo Van-Kissing answered when I knocked on the front door. I introduced myself and asked if Councilwoman Van was there.
“Let me check, OK?” he said. “She’s home but let me see if she’s able to talk.”
He returned a minute later to tell me Van “wasn’t available right now” but asked me for my card and she would get back to me.
Van-Kissing then asked me “what this is about” and I told him I was researching allegations that Councilwoman Van lived at the Hynes Road house, and not the Cedar Road house where she is registered to vote.
“She will reach out to you, because this is important,” he replied. “But we’re getting ready for a big trip.”
When I asked him whether they live at the Hynes Road or Cedar Street houses, Van-Kissing essentially said they live at both.
“We have both,” he said, smiling. “We have the house on Cedar, and we have this one, and it’s split, kind of.”
“Which one would you say you spend more time at?” I asked.
“I can’t tell,” Van-Kissing replied. “I spend more time here because my office is in here,” – explaining there wasn’t enough space for an office at the Cedar Street house. Van-Kissing, a software engineer who works remotely, was friendly and engaging throughout our conversation.
Van-Kissing noted that his mother- and father-in-law lived in next door to the Cedar Street house.
“My kid eats at grandma’s because he likes her food, so they are there a lot more than I am,” he said. “It’s a mixed bag.”
He confirmed what his father-in-law said about other people living at the Cedar Street house where his wife is registered to vote. Van-Kissing said they were connected to his brother-in-law but he wasn’t certain if they were family or not.
“That’s the thing when you have a lot of space but you also have a lot of family, and not everyone is on the same economic level because some came from Vietnam later than others. Whoever has space basically hosts,” he told me.
“We’re helping my brother-in-law’s someone, and in return he helps us fix [the Hynes Road] house,” he said, explaining that it was built in the 1950s, needed a lot of work, and they were re-modeling it in stages.
Van-Kissing said the semi-rural nature of Hynes Estates, where several properties have corrals, arenas, horses, chickens and other animals, was the reason they bought the house.
“The animal thing is why we bought this,” noting they cannot have those kinds of animals at the Cedar Street house.
“We have space in the backyard, which we partially use ourselves and partially sub out…share with other people,” he said.
“Here there is more freedom” in the kind of animals they can keep, Van-Kissing explained.
Our conversation wrapped up and I walked to the next house hoping to interview the next-door neighbor – who wasn’t home as it turned out. As I walked to my car, I saw a silver plug-in Prius leaving – it was driven by an Asian woman who looked like Councilwoman Van but I couldn’t tell for certain.
About 90 minutes later, Van left a voice mail for me saying she’d gotten a text from her husband saying I wanted to speak with her, as if it were the first she’d heard it – which was odd since he had gone inside to tell her about my request while I stood at the front door of the Hynes Road house. We spoke on the phone the following afternoon.
As I had with her husband the day before, I explained the purpose of my call and the reason I went by her house the day before.
“Which house?” she said. When I explained that I went by both houses, she said, “I actually own three houses, so which house are you talking about?”
I told her I’d gone by Cedar Street address where she’s registered to vote – “Yep, that’s my home” – and then to the Hynes Road house – “Yep. That’s my rental. Just those two?”
“I didn’t know you had a third home,” I replied.
“Yeah, I own multiple properties,” Van said.
Cutting to the chase, I asked which house she lived at.
“So, I live at 10872 Cedar Street. I also have two other properties, one of which I’m renting out and the other one I have family living in the third one,” she answered. The last house to which she is referring is 10882 Cedar Street, where her parents and others live. According to the OC Registrar of Voters, there are six people registered to vote at the 4-bedroom, 1,338 square foot house.
When I mentioned no one answered the door when I visited the 10872 Cedar Street house, Van replied she was “probably out collecting signatures” for her candidate filing.
I mentioned that shortly after going to 10872 Cedar Street, I went to her Hynes Road house, and her husband said she was there but couldn’t talk.
“Somebody, yes, I think was at the door,” she said.
For purposes of establishing residency, a candidate’s domicile largely comes down to where they sleep. So I asked Councilman Van if she sleeps at 10872 Cedar Street.
She hesitated, and then answered, “Sometimes. Sometimes I sleep on my other property on Cedar,” she replied, saying her mom is sick and she sometimes has to take care of her.
“In Vietnamese culture, we’re expected to take care of our parents pretty aggressively, so sometimes me and my siblings take turns accompanying her.”
When asked about the six horses being kept at her Hynes Road house, Van said “they came with the house” and she didn’t think it was right to get rid of them.
I returned to the question of domicile. And since determining it largely comes down to where a person sleeps at night and expects to sleep at night, I asked Van where her husband and your son sleep.
Van avoided directly answering the question.
“So, again, I live at 10872 Cedar Street. My parents live in the other property that I own, which is next door.” She went on to say that her family helps her with child care and sometimes she and her son spend the night at her parents house next door when her husband travels.
“It’s kind of like a village mentality. We’ll take care of each other,” Van said, while avoiding expressly stating that her husband and son sleep at 10872 Cedar Street.
In a August 3 response to a follow-up e-mail from me, Van stated “My family lives at 10872 Cedar Street.” She also stated “we have relatives who recently immigrated from Vietnam living with us at 10872 Cedar St.”
There are half-a-dozen horses living in the expansive backyard of her Hynes Road house, which could reasonably viewed as evidence that house is her primary residence.
Van said the horses came with the Hynes Road house when they bought it in late 2021.
“I didn’t think it was right to remove them. Where would they go?” she wrote. “I have the space, so why not let them stay?”
Horses are expensive to maintain. Judging from online research and consultations with horse owners, a conservative estimate of the basic annual cost of keeping a horse is around $5,000 – meaning those six horses are likely costing Van at least $30,000 a year.
“I love the property because I wanted to keep chickens. It’s basically my farm, so I have to come all the time to take care of it,” Van continued. “But I’m not familiar with horses, and they they are part of the property.”
Van’s responses to questions about residency illustrate the tricky nature of settling such questions. During our conversation, when given the opportunity, Van, an attorney, never expressly stated her husband and son sleep primarily at the house at 10782 Cedar Street.
Later, when responding via e-mail, Van was direct in saying her family lives at 10782 Cedar Street.
Van stated that when her husband travels for work, she and her son sometimes sleep next door at her parent’s house at 10882 Cedar Street – where at least six adults are living, according to Registrar of Voter records. This seems puzzling (and unusual) since there are already other family members living the house where she is registered to vote and claims to live.
Her explanation that she wasn’t at her 10872 Cedar Street address when I knocked on the door because she was gathering signatures doesn’t quite jibe with the fact that she was at the Hynes Road house when I stopped less than half an hour later.
When I spoke to her husband, he didn’t really know how the relatives staying at the 10782 Cedar Street house were related to his wife – which is odd if the Vans really are domiciled at that address as the councilmember claims.
At approximately 9:30 p.m. on July 17, I drove by the Hynes Road house. Councilwoman Van’s husband and son could be clearly seen, through the big kitchen window, relaxing in the kitchen. A reasonable person would reasonably conclude that is where they live.
I spoke to Hynes Court residents who have routinely seen Councilmember Van leaving Hynes Court to drive to city council meetings and related events.
Tenants At The Rental House
As noted, Councilmember Van referred to her house in District 4 as the “rental house” – and she does have tenants living there. According to her Form 700, she reports between $10,000 and $100,000 in rental income from the Hynes Road property, and lists Hugo Perez, Sergio Rosendo and Angela Aquino as tenants.
According to voter records, Hugo Perez, Sergio Rosendo and a Naomi Rosendo are registered to vote at the Hynes Road House.
Access to Hynes Estates is controlled by a sliding gate – similar to the kind you see at public storage facilities. There is a visitor’s booth on the side that lists Hynes Park residents. Next to each name is a button one can press to request entry from that resident. Next to one of the buttons: “Van Kissing, Timo / Van, Hong Alyce.”
If the tenants are the actual residents of the Hynes Road house, why aren’t they listed on the Hynes Estates residents directory? If Councilwoman Van and her family don’t live there, why are they listed as the residents?
According to county property tax records, Van takes her homeowners exemption on 10782 Cedar Street.
Others Skeptical of Van’s Claims
Stanton Parks Commissioner Victor Barrios isn’t surprised that questions are being raised about whether Van actually lives in the council district she represents. Barrios has lived in District 2 since 2002.
“I’d heard a year ago that she did not live in the district, that she had moved,” he told m, saying h had heard it from neighbors and “people who work for the city.”
Stanton’s council district’s are small, and District 2 has only 3,752 registered voters.
“I’ve never met her,” said Barrios, who is disabled.
“When a you’re involved, people see you and hear you,” Barrios said. “But no one in my side of town has met or seen her.
Barrios is a long-time community volunteer who is running against Van in District 2 this November. He said he and his volunteers routinely encounter District 2 voters who have never mt or interacted with Van or have no idea who she is.
Van’s Actual Residency Seems Murky, At Best
Generally speaking, it isn’t difficult for a reasonable person to ascertain with reasonable certainty where an elected official lives. Not so in Councilwoman Van’s case. The evidence is at best contradictory, and a solid circumstantial case can be made that she actually lives in District 4, and that the house where she is registered to vote in District 2 is a residence of convenience.
