ARTICLE
I hear stories of frustration about our housing crisis at local coffee shops, at community events and through informal conversations on street corners — with a sigh, the comments go like this: “I love Santa Cruz County, I love the central coast and the Monterey Bay, the beaches and the mountains. Santa Cruz is a wonderful place to live, work and play — if only you can afford it.” People struggle each and every day — week to week, month to month and paycheck to paycheck. A school teacher shudders to think — “can I continue couch surfing another semester hoping that I can find a more permanent place to live?” In our hospitality industry — individuals work two or more jobs to be able to afford the rents in Santa Cruz — usually sharing a house with three or four other people in the same situation. Or worse, absorbing the mental and physical challenges of a two hour commute to work and home. The local restaurant owner ponders the plight of their business which is directly tied to finding and paying their workers a fair wage. Restaurant owners, Kendra Baker and Zach Davis made that transition out of necessity. As Davis explained in a recent Santa Cruz Sentinel story, “The labor market in Santa Cruz is challenging for employers, especially in the service industry,” Davis said. “There’s not a lot of flexibility around pay scales and compensation, so it can be challenging, especially in a finer dining type of establishment like Assembly was.” snap-taco-downtown-restaurateurs-pivot-to-more-casual-experience/. The owner’s new restaurant is scaled in size and cost to meet a lower income clientele and student population. A couple weeks back the five chambers of Santa Cruz County came together to host a business mixer at the Tannery Arts Center. The art studio was packed with locals from Aptos, Capitola, Pajaro Valley, San Lorenzo Valley, Santa Cruz and Scotts Valley. The energy in the room was on high octane. Then just as we were celebrating the connection between the arts and business community, I read the news about one of our community leaders — leaving us for a better opportunity for her family. Executive Director of the Tannery Arts Center, Michelle Williams is saying goodbye to Santa Cruz – and not because she wanted to leave, but because she had to. “We’re going backwards, instead of forwards, in our financial lives,” Williams remembers thinking. “We have no hope of ever buying a home here.” “It’s been a combination of love and heartbreak,” Williams explains. “It’s not like I was burned out. It’s not like I ran out of passion for this job. It’s math. It doesn’t work, and it hasn’t worked. We’ve got to make it work. We owe it to our kids and our futures.” You can read Jake Pierce’s Goodtimes article here: http://goodtimes.sc/santa-cruz-news/news/michelle-williams/ Stories like this one are all too common today. I have written time and time again that Santa Cruz County is one of the least affordable housing markets in the country. The Santa Cruz County Chamber of Commerce works hand-in-hand with other business organizations and housing advocates along the central coast with one thematic message — we need to build more housing at all income levels and especially at the very low income levels or else we’ll slip into an over priced bucolic retirement community. The county and our cities have taken some steps to address our housing problems by modifying or tweaking housing codes and ordinances. There have been a number of housing projects approved in our cities and the county. Some are in construction or recently completed in the past year or so. But it is not enough. The entitlement to construction timelines and eventually putting the housing project to market is painfully slow and costly. We see some progress with the city of Santa Cruz taking action—adopting a relocation assistance ordinance for tenants who see large rent increases, streamlining accessory dwelling unit rules and approving 205 new units of market-rate housing on Pacific Avenue and Laurel Street. City leaders also have expressed high hopes of building an additional 100-percent affordable housing complex next door. Yet there are some in our community who oppose more housing, oppose the incremental growth at the university and don’t want more housing along our major transit corridors and they turn to the courts to block, delay or completely eliminate the chance to create an adequate housing stock for our communities. In the battle to build more housing opportunities for our region, my colleague, Matt Huerta from the Monterey Bay Economic Partnership, hammers home the message. “They (the cities) make steps in the right direction and have demonstrated an openness, but there’s a lack of progress,” Huerta says. “There’s a lack of strong enough political will to get the big things done.” We are at crossroads where if local government doesn’t move faster to address our housing shortages, state government will step in. Last year, we wrote about SB 35 (Wiener) setting the bar by allowing a development to move forward when local government or community opposition staminas the process even though the project meets all local land use requirements. SB 35 has been used in a few cities in California. The Chamber supported that legislation. Again, Senator Wiener has introduced SB 50 — The More HOMES (Housing, Opportunity, Mobility, Equity, and Stability) Act. SB 50 is one more tool for local governments to respond to our housing needs and also address adverse environmental impacts caused by longer commutes and more traffic congestion. State Sen. Scott Wiener’s effort to boost housing density near public transit in California has officially progressed farther than last year when his similar bill was killed in a committee. Wiener and his allies will be able to keep negotiating details of the bill with detractors after the State Senate Committee on housing voted to advance the bill, Senate Bill 50 , in a 9-to-1 vote last week. The bill’s main goal is to change zoning codes to allow residential buildings of greater height and density near rail, bus, and other public transit, though it also includes new tenant protections and affordable housing requirements. It’s one of the more ambitious initiatives to address California’s housing crisis—and one of the most controversial. The Chamber supports this bill. Our public sector leaders should respond now so we don’t lose more community leaders like Michelle Williams, or the employees in our service industries, the school teachers and public safety professionals and the medical professionals who have chosen another community to call home.
I hear stories of frustration about our housing crisis at local coffee shops, at community events and through informal conversations on street corners — with a sigh, the comments go like this: “I love Santa Cruz County, I love the central coast and the Monterey Bay, the beaches and the mountains. Santa Cruz is a wonderful place to live, work and play — if only you can afford it.”
People struggle each and every day — week to week, month to month and paycheck to paycheck. A school teacher shudders to think — “can I continue couch surfing another semester hoping that I can find a more permanent place to live?”
In our hospitality industry — individuals work two or more jobs to be able to afford the rents in Santa Cruz — usually sharing a house with three or four other people in the same situation. Or worse, absorbing the mental and physical challenges of a two hour commute to work and home.
The local restaurant owner ponders the plight of their business which is directly tied to finding and paying their workers a fair wage.
Restaurant owners, Kendra Baker and Zach Davis made that transition out of necessity. As Davis explained in a recent Santa Cruz Sentinel story, “The labor market in Santa Cruz is challenging for employers, especially in the service industry,” Davis said. “There’s not a lot of flexibility around pay scales and compensation, so it can be challenging, especially in a finer dining type of establishment like Assembly was.” snap-taco-downtown-restaurateurs-pivot-to-more-casual-experience/. The owner’s new restaurant is scaled in size and cost to meet a lower income clientele and student population.
A couple weeks back the five chambers of Santa Cruz County came together to host a business mixer at the Tannery Arts Center. The art studio was packed with locals from Aptos, Capitola, Pajaro Valley, San Lorenzo Valley, Santa Cruz and Scotts Valley. The energy in the room was on high octane. Then just as we were celebrating the connection between the arts and business community, I read the news about one of our community leaders — leaving us for a better opportunity for her family. Executive Director of the Tannery Arts Center, Michelle Williams is saying goodbye to Santa Cruz – and not because she wanted to leave, but because she had to.
“We’re going backwards, instead of forwards, in our financial lives,” Williams remembers thinking. “We have no hope of ever buying a home here.”
“It’s been a combination of love and heartbreak,” Williams explains. “It’s not like I was burned out. It’s not like I ran out of passion for this job. It’s math. It doesn’t work, and it hasn’t worked. We’ve got to make it work. We owe it to our kids and our futures.” You can read Jake Pierce’s Goodtimes article here: http://goodtimes.sc/santa-cruz-news/news/michelle-williams/
Stories like this one are all too common today. I have written time and time again that Santa Cruz County is one of the least affordable housing markets in the country. The Santa Cruz County Chamber of Commerce works hand-in-hand with other business organizations and housing advocates along the central coast with one thematic message — we need to build more housing at all income levels and especially at the very low income levels or else we’ll slip into an over priced bucolic retirement community.
The county and our cities have taken some steps to address our housing problems by modifying or tweaking housing codes and ordinances. There have been a number of housing projects approved in our cities and the county. Some are in construction or recently completed in the past year or so. But it is not enough. The entitlement to construction timelines and eventually putting the housing project to market is painfully slow and costly.
We see some progress with the city of Santa Cruz taking action—adopting a relocation assistance ordinance for tenants who see large rent increases, streamlining accessory dwelling unit rules and approving 205 new units of market-rate housing on Pacific Avenue and Laurel Street. City leaders also have expressed high hopes of building an additional 100-percent affordable housing complex next door.
Yet there are some in our community who oppose more housing, oppose the incremental growth at the university and don’t want more housing along our major transit corridors and they turn to the courts to block, delay or completely eliminate the chance to create an adequate housing stock for our communities. In the battle to build more housing opportunities for our region, my colleague, Matt Huerta from the Monterey Bay Economic Partnership, hammers home the message. “They (the cities) make steps in the right direction and have demonstrated an openness, but there’s a lack of progress,” Huerta says. “There’s a lack of strong enough political will to get the big things done.”
We are at crossroads where if local government doesn’t move faster to address our housing shortages, state government will step in. Last year, we wrote about SB 35 (Wiener) setting the bar by allowing a development to move forward when local government or community opposition staminas the process even though the project meets all local land use requirements. SB 35 has been used in a few cities in California. The Chamber supported that legislation.
Again, Senator Wiener has introduced SB 50 — The More HOMES (Housing, Opportunity, Mobility, Equity, and Stability) Act. SB 50 is one more tool for local governments to respond to our housing needs and also address adverse environmental impacts caused by longer commutes and more traffic congestion.
State Sen. Scott Wiener’s effort to boost housing density near public transit in California has officially progressed farther than last year when his similar bill was killed in a committee. Wiener and his allies will be able to keep negotiating details of the bill with detractors after the State Senate Committee on housing voted to advance the bill, Senate Bill 50 , in a 9-to-1 vote last week.
The bill’s main goal is to change zoning codes to allow residential buildings of greater height and density near rail, bus, and other public transit, though it also includes new tenant protections and affordable housing requirements. It’s one of the more ambitious initiatives to address California’s housing crisis—and one of the most controversial. The Chamber supports this bill.
Our public sector leaders should respond now so we don’t lose more community leaders like Michelle Williams, or the employees in our service industries, the school teachers and public safety professionals and the medical professionals who have chosen another community to call home.