ARTICLE
Transitions can be hard if you take on too much and create expectations that are not deliverable. The old adage — buy low, sell high — is also true in Chamber advocacy. We must focus on priority issues where the Chamber can make a difference. Now that our dear friend Bill Tysseling has retired, it is time to do a re-set on the Chamber’s future path. Regrettably, we lose the institutional knowledge that he provided to the Chamber and the greater Santa Cruz business community for more than a decade. As I assume the role as the next CEO of the Chamber, I bring years of public, private and non-profit experience to the task of continuing the Chamber’s 128-year mission for economic vitality and community prosperity in Santa Cruz County. What I cannot replace is an ‘Iowa salt-of-the earth humor’ that Bill delivered to us over the years. You’ll just have to settle for some Nevadan jokes once in a while. Yes, I am a native Nevadan. What I also bring to the Chamber is a passion to grow the organization’s brand and utilize my strong advocacy network that expands beyond the boundaries of Santa Cruz County. There are some Santa Cruzans who think we should remain an isolated oasis surrounded by the beauty of the Monterey Bay and redwoods of the Santa Cruz Mountains. If we make Santa Cruz a difficult place to reside because of our high cost of living and limited housing opportunities we defeat the very benefit of what makes Santa Cruz special. Our infrastructure problems are similar to those facing communities to the north east (Silicon Valley) and to our south (Monterey County and beyond). We cannot act in isolation if we plan to address our limited infrastructure problems. We need to look at other model communities to re-shape Santa Cruz to make it the innovative and creative place we are fortunate to call home. The central focus of Chamber advocacy for the remainder of 2017 will be housing (especially the corridor plans and downtown development measures) and transportation (especially the use of Measure D funds). Let me focus on housing as it is the most challenging policy issue facing our region. In fact it is a California coastal problem that is slowly debilitating other communities in the western United States. We have a very serious housing shortage in Santa Cruz County. Our four cities and the County leaders continually work to address our housing problems with updates to general plans, code modification, addressing ‘granny’ units and other policies that include our homeless, low and moderate income population to market rate (high income) homes. One sign of a growing economy is a community’s ability to attract a quality workforce and provide adequate housing for our employees and their families. We are failing to meet the housing demand with a supply of all types of housing needed for a community to thrive. The cost of housing is pushing our employees out of the market, increasing their commute times and reducing their quality of life. Just take a look at these surveys of housing prices and employment wages which makes Santa Cruz one of the least affordable places to live and work in the country. We can’t fix our housing problems unless we address our employment sector as well. ATTOM Data Solutions, curator of the nation’s largest fused property database, released its Q1 2017 U.S. Home Affordability Index, which shows that one in every four county housing markets analyzed for the report were less affordable than their historic affordability averages in the first quarter of 2017. 5 counties where buying a home requires more than 100 percent of average wages. Average wage earners would need to spend more than 100 percent of their income to buy a median-priced home in five of the 379 counties analyzed: Realtytrac affordability index 2017 • Kings County (Brooklyn), New York (121.4 percent) • Santa Cruz County, California (111.9 percent) • Marin County, California (109.9 percent) • New York County (Manhattan), New York (100.5 percent) • Maui County, Hawaii (100.2 percent). A 2015 UC Santa Cruz study ("Working For Dignity") found that the city’s five most commonly advertised job positions were cashier, retail salesperson, farm worker, kitchen work, and waiting tables, offering wages from $18,800 to $23,500/year. Santa Cruz county's median income in the 2013 census survey was over $68,000/year. It is a tad better today, but doesn’t keep pace for the cost of housing and general living expenses. It is not all doom and gloom, though. The recent announcement about one of our growing tech firms poses an additional concern. Looker announced that it has closed an $81.5 million Series D funding round led by CapitalG, Alphabet’s growth equity investment fund. The round includes additional participation from new investors Geodesic Capital and Goldman Sachs, as well as from Looker’s previous investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Meritech Capital Partners, Redpoint Ventures and Sapphire Ventures. Looker has raised a total of $177.5 million since 2013. According to the announcement, “Looker is a modern data platform that leverages today’s best data technology to let everyone in an organization make better business decisions using data. The announcement will help Looker continue to innovate with even more intuitive ways for users to access data, expand product functionality, and make deeper investments in its integrations with the most powerful database technologies.” At a time when we are ‘growing tech’ companies in our coastal region, it is also time to address our next generation housing needs. Our policy decision makers, our employers (like Looker, UCSC and others) want to ‘thrive’ here, but we need to collectively think about where we see ourselves in the next ten to twenty years. If Looker promotes its image as helping organizations make better decisions using data; if the University is successful in finding a way to house up to 3000 students in the next decade and recruit the talent to teach these students then the logical nexus for me begs an answer to these questions: • Where will the housing be developed for these growing companies, university professors and support staff who have a global presence and an international reputation? • Where will the next generation of young professionals call home if they are lucky to land the new tech opportunities that are sure to come. This requires a collaborative discussion, not a finger pointing dialogue. • Can a data company like Looker play a role in helping us address ‘our communities’ pressing issues? • Can the work of the University’s genome project unlock the key to next generation health and quality of life issues? • Will Santa Cruz public officials, private sector business leaders, and community leaders stand tall in the face of current and past opposition to change? • Can we re-invent Santa Cruz to be recognized as 21st Century community with an eye trained on promoting and protecting our natural environment? Santa Cruz is suffering from the cumulative impact of twenty plus years of neglecting our housing needs. The Santa Cruz Area Chamber of Commerce recognizes the solution to this problem will require sustained commitment and action over a long period of time. The Chamber supports increasing the number of housing units in Santa Cruz County, with a focus on serving moderate to low income individuals and families through increased-density, mixed-use developments. We understand that in increasing the number of housing units, impacts infrastructure issues, such as water, transportation and land use. Solutions to these and other infrastructure issues must be pursued simultaneously to address our housing issues. Building the right type of housing in the right location is essential to meet our deficient housing stock. The recent city corridor plan is one example that will test our community. No one disagrees that we have a housing shortage, but when it comes to practical solutions — residents make it clear they do not want the new housing in their neighborhood. We need to change that attitude from NIMBY (Not in my back yard) into YIMBY (Yes in my back yard). If I have learned one thing in my many years of public policy advocacy and as a business executive, we don’t achieve success to produce economic vitality by acting in isolation. It takes collaboration between the public and private sectors, it takes an open dialogue within the community and it takes transparent partnerships to turn the corner from a failing (infrastructure) housing system to a region that provides housing options for all sectors of our community. The Chamber stands ready to be a key player in the County’s future. Let’s tackle this problem together and truly make Santa Cruz a better place for all of our citizens.
Transitions can be hard if you take on too much and create expectations that are not deliverable. The old adage — buy low, sell high — is also true in Chamber advocacy. We must focus on priority issues where the Chamber can make a difference.
Now that our dear friend Bill Tysseling has retired, it is time to do a re-set on the Chamber’s future path. Regrettably, we lose the institutional knowledge that he provided to the Chamber and the greater Santa Cruz business community for more than a decade. As I assume the role as the next CEO of the Chamber, I bring years of public, private and non-profit experience to the task of continuing the Chamber’s 128-year mission for economic vitality and community prosperity in Santa Cruz County. What I cannot replace is an ‘Iowa salt-of-the earth humor’ that Bill delivered to us over the years. You’ll just have to settle for some Nevadan jokes once in a while. Yes, I am a native Nevadan.
What I also bring to the Chamber is a passion to grow the organization’s brand and utilize my strong advocacy network that expands beyond the boundaries of Santa Cruz County. There are some Santa Cruzans who think we should remain an isolated oasis surrounded by the beauty of the Monterey Bay and redwoods of the Santa Cruz Mountains. If we make Santa Cruz a difficult place to reside because of our high cost of living and limited housing opportunities we defeat the very benefit of what makes Santa Cruz special. Our infrastructure problems are similar to those facing communities to the north east (Silicon Valley) and to our south (Monterey County and beyond). We cannot act in isolation if we plan to address our limited infrastructure problems. We need to look at other model communities to re-shape Santa Cruz to make it the innovative and creative place we are fortunate to call home.
The central focus of Chamber advocacy for the remainder of 2017 will be housing (especially the corridor plans and downtown development measures) and transportation (especially the use of Measure D funds).
Let me focus on housing as it is the most challenging policy issue facing our region. In fact it is a California coastal problem that is slowly debilitating other communities in the western United States. We have a very serious housing shortage in Santa Cruz County. Our four cities and the County leaders continually work to address our housing problems with updates to general plans, code modification, addressing ‘granny’ units and other policies that include our homeless, low and moderate income population to market rate (high income) homes. One sign of a growing economy is a community’s ability to attract a quality workforce and provide adequate housing for our employees and their families. We are failing to meet the housing demand with a supply of all types of housing needed for a community to thrive.
The cost of housing is pushing our employees out of the market, increasing their commute times and reducing their quality of life. Just take a look at these surveys of housing prices and employment wages which makes Santa Cruz one of the least affordable places to live and work in the country. We can’t fix our housing problems unless we address our employment sector as well.
ATTOM Data Solutions, curator of the nation’s largest fused property database, released its Q1 2017 U.S. Home Affordability Index, which shows that one in every four county housing markets analyzed for the report were less affordable than their historic affordability averages in the first quarter of 2017. 5 counties where buying a home requires more than 100 percent of average wages. Average wage earners would need to spend more than 100 percent of their income to buy a median-priced home in five of the 379 counties analyzed: Realtytrac affordability index 2017
• Kings County (Brooklyn), New York (121.4 percent)
• Santa Cruz County, California (111.9 percent)
• Marin County, California (109.9 percent)
• New York County (Manhattan), New York (100.5 percent)
• Maui County, Hawaii (100.2 percent).
A 2015 UC Santa Cruz study ("Working For Dignity") found that the city’s five most commonly advertised job positions were cashier, retail salesperson, farm worker, kitchen work, and waiting tables, offering wages from $18,800 to $23,500/year. Santa Cruz county's median income in the 2013 census survey was over $68,000/year. It is a tad better today, but doesn’t keep pace for the cost of housing and general living expenses.
It is not all doom and gloom, though. The recent announcement about one of our growing tech firms poses an additional concern. Looker announced that it has closed an $81.5 million Series D funding round led by CapitalG, Alphabet’s growth equity investment fund. The round includes additional participation from new investors Geodesic Capital and Goldman Sachs, as well as from Looker’s previous investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Meritech Capital Partners, Redpoint Ventures and Sapphire Ventures. Looker has raised a total of $177.5 million since 2013.
According to the announcement, “Looker is a modern data platform that leverages today’s best data technology to let everyone in an organization make better business decisions using data. The announcement will help Looker continue to innovate with even more intuitive ways for users to access data, expand product functionality, and make deeper investments in its integrations with the most powerful database technologies.”
At a time when we are ‘growing tech’ companies in our coastal region, it is also time to address our next generation housing needs. Our policy decision makers, our employers (like Looker, UCSC and others) want to ‘thrive’ here, but we need to collectively think about where we see ourselves in the next ten to twenty years. If Looker promotes its image as helping organizations make better decisions using data; if the University is successful in finding a way to house up to 3000 students in the next decade and recruit the talent to teach these students then the logical nexus for me begs an answer to these questions:
• Where will the housing be developed for these growing companies, university professors and support staff who have a global presence and an international reputation? • Where will the next generation of young professionals call home if they are lucky to land the new tech opportunities that are sure to come. This requires a collaborative discussion, not a finger pointing dialogue. • Can a data company like Looker play a role in helping us address ‘our communities’ pressing issues? • Can the work of the University’s genome project unlock the key to next generation health and quality of life issues? • Will Santa Cruz public officials, private sector business leaders, and community leaders stand tall in the face of current and past opposition to change? • Can we re-invent Santa Cruz to be recognized as 21st Century community with an eye trained on promoting and protecting our natural environment?
Santa Cruz is suffering from the cumulative impact of twenty plus years of neglecting our housing needs. The Santa Cruz Area Chamber of Commerce recognizes the solution to this problem will require sustained commitment and action over a long period of time.
The Chamber supports increasing the number of housing units in Santa Cruz County, with a focus on serving moderate to low income individuals and families through increased-density, mixed-use developments. We understand that in increasing the number of housing units, impacts infrastructure issues, such as water, transportation and land use. Solutions to these and other infrastructure issues must be pursued simultaneously to address our housing issues. Building the right type of housing in the right location is essential to meet our deficient housing stock. The recent city corridor plan is one example that will test our community. No one disagrees that we have a housing shortage, but when it comes to practical solutions — residents make it clear they do not want the new housing in their neighborhood. We need to change that attitude from NIMBY (Not in my back yard) into YIMBY (Yes in my back yard).
If I have learned one thing in my many years of public policy advocacy and as a business executive, we don’t achieve success to produce economic vitality by acting in isolation. It takes collaboration between the public and private sectors, it takes an open dialogue within the community and it takes transparent partnerships to turn the corner from a failing (infrastructure) housing system to a region that provides housing options for all sectors of our community. The Chamber stands ready to be a key player in the County’s future. Let’s tackle this problem together and truly make Santa Cruz a better place for all of our citizens.