An issue that is on the minds of many in our district and our county is housing. Last night I attended a forum hosted by Lookout and the Paradox Hotel in Santa Cruz that focused on the concerns related to housing and the current crisis that we are in.
It is very clear that there are a lot of folks trying to find a solution, but running into the brick wall of reality and the deep difficulty we're in. Some things, like the interest rates, are completely out of our control. There is also the demands from the state with the mandated RHNA (Regional Housing Needs Regulation) that is proving difficult for the county to contend with. Other solutions require a time machine to implement; we're at the point now where we need radical solutions, real outside the box, and sometimes uncomfortable thinking.
If we're going to solve this problem, we have to defeat the twin concerns of building costs and regulation. Regulation we have some control over through our voting; that along with change in the culture in our county government we can make real progress in this direction.
What are some solutions?
Building costs are harder to tackle, but one thing we can do is to remove the profit motive by investing in public housing. This has been the solution in many, many municipalities, territories, and counties outside of our own. Even a moderate amount of public housing can take some pressure off of the rental market, and help drive down rents while providing housing opportunities to lower income folks in our area.
By removing the profit motive, we can cut almost 30% off of the real cost it takes to build this particular type of housing. This housing could support some critical members of our communities: teachers, restaurant workers, county/city employees, workers from Watsonville and others who as a society we rely heavily on to make things run smoothly. Public housing means young people and families staying in the area rather than leaving. Public housing could also help house local students, taking even more pressure off the rental market.
We need innovative thinking and approaches. We need to consider retrofitting unused county-owned buildings into public housing, we need to consider converting empty office spaces into housing-- fundamentally we need to treat this like the emergency that it is.
The Planning Department
Lastly, like I have been saying since the inception of my campaign, we need to tackle the obstruction of the planning department in private construction. From CZU Fire rebuilds to the construction of ADU’s the myriad of hoops, obstacles and exorbitant costs that people contend with needs to be addressed.
We're not going to slowly legislate our way out of this mess. The costs that are downstream from this extremely expensive housing market are cooking us all slowly, like crabs in a boiling pot of water and it’s only going to get more expensive. Folks have started to sound the alarm, but we're only getting out of this pot if we move quickly, and work together to reimagine whats possible.
In Community, always.
Christopher
So glad you attended this meeting, Christopher. I watched on FB Live and came to same conclusions. We need some fast action like Temporary housing to get people off the streets while new affordable housing is being built.