Podcast: |
Monday, August 31, 2015
Lincoln Institute
The City of Santa Cruz Planning Commission meets on Thursday, and the City’s Housing Element will be on the agenda. There is more information at kusp.org/landuse
Residential property around the Monterey Bay is seen as a wonderful investment by people with money, many of whom do not live in the Monterey Bay Region, but live somewhere else in the world. Given our free market economy, it becomes impossible to preserve any affordable housing opportunities here.
As a matter of pure logic, and basic economics, if our communities want affordable housing, they must either use public funds to build it, and/or find a mechanism to impose price controls. Just to say it again, if maintaining a “free market” in real estate is our society’s highest priority, then prices will be set by those with the most money. In Monterey County, huge numbers of homes formerly available for residential use by local residents are now second homes, the owners living elsewhere and only using the homes infrequently. They have the money to do that, and that’s what they do. In Santa Cruz County, higher-paid people who work in the Silicon Valley buy up homes that are then not available for local workers.
I have a link in today’s transcript to an excellent article in Land Lines, the journal of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, if you’d like to read up on this distressing fact of life.
More Information:
Former Santa Cruz County Supervisor Gary Patton talks about land use, and land use decisions, with an emphasis on public participation and how the land use process works.