Santa Cruz mayoral candidates need a ‘Mamdani moment’ on housing policies

Have something to say? Lookout welcomes letters to the editor, within our policies, from readers. Guidelines here.

As the Santa Cruz mayoral election approaches, the two candidates — Ryan Coonerty and Ami Chen Mills — reflect the city’s liberal and progressive values on many issues.  But not on housing.  

Although both candidates talk about affordability, their housing policies are out of sync with research and with progressives like New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani who see expanding private market supply as an essential part of lowering housing costs.

This opposition to housing development comes when Santa Cruz continues facing a housing affordability crisis. For four years in a row, the National Low Income Housing Coalition has found that the Santa Cruz-Watsonville metro is America’s most expensive rental market, higher than New York, Boston, Seattle or San Francisco.

SANTA CRUZ MAYOR’S RACE: Read more Lookout news and Community Voices opinion coverage here

I’m a part-time resident of Santa Cruz, and a full-time progressive economist who studies cities, inequality and housing. I opposed 2024’s Measure M requiring voter approval for modest building height improvements and increasing project affordability requirements beyond what the market would bear because it would have decreased affordability by limiting housing construction and supply.

Thankfully, voters turned Measure M down.

I track housing research and policy across the country. Since 2024, the evidence has only gotten stronger that increased development and housing supply – including private market-rate development – is a key to housing affordability. 

Many progressive politicians now accept this evidence, notably Mamdani. When The New York Times asked him to name one issue where he had changed his mind, he replied, “the role of the private market in housing construction.” And since becoming mayor, he’s aggressively promoted rezoning for greater density, reduced environmental and other regulations blocking housing, and supported cutting back regulatory tactics that slowed or stopped housing construction.

But the housing debate in Santa Cruz is out of step with these progressives, and behind the times and the evidence.

 I’ve written elsewhere about progressive myths that inhibit housing development — that market-rate development is only for “luxury” housing, when in fact it helps lower rents across the board; that large private investors are buying up lots of rental properties and driving up rents, when in fact most rental investors are small, local “mom and pop” landlords; and that there’s not really a shortage, but lots of vacant homes held off the market, which isn’t supported by the data.

Although neither Coonerty nor Mills explicitly reject increasing housing supply, their policies don’t reflect a real commitment to increasing it. 

Both of them now oppose the new six-story project at Seabright and Soquel avenues, even though the two options for that site would be either 100% affordable or housing for older adults. 

That site is excellent for housing – an already somewhat dense area (at least by Santa Cruz standards), walkable, and along a major transit route so cars could be limited. It would replace a hardware store, some small businesses and a large surface parking lot (one of the most unproductive land uses cities have, especially when housing could be constructed there).

Chen Mills is developing her housing policies. She has favored “missing middle” housing — duplexes and similar buildings spread throughout single-family zoned neighborhoods rather than larger buildings downtown or along transit corridors.  Although this openness to neighborhood development is encouraging, Mills’ campaign website says “the city has built its fair share of housing, PLUS” and she wants to “push back,” presumably against state housing targets.

It’s a mistake to counterpose missing middle housing against denser downtown or transit-oriented construction.

Santa Cruz needs both.

Coonerty, accused by some opponents as an “advocate and consultant for big development,” has seemingly gone full NIMBY in his housing policies. In a recent Lookout Community Voices opinion piece, Coonerty pledged to fight the new Seabright project “with every legal tool available,” using aggressive language about the project (“I hate it,” “Nearly everything about this project is wrong”) and calling it “Soviet-looking.”  

Although conceptually endorsing downtown development, he wants strong height caps and “well-designed” buildings there. That could limit the total units built, meaning less affordable housing that otherwise could be part of such buildings. And he attacks Chen Mills’ ideas about spreading “missing middle” housing into single-family neighborhoods without offering a concrete plan for where those housing units would go instead.

Coonerty and the city council also supported the 2012 general plan that allows developments like Seabright. If he is pivoting away from that support, he should say where the housing will go instead, as experts say state law allows no net loss of zoned capacity for housing.

Coonerty also argued, similar to claims I’ve heard from some Santa Cruz progressives, that the state’s required housing allocations for Santa Cruz are inaccurate and unfair.  To address the state’s chronic housing crisis, the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) sets regional housing requirements across the state.  Each region then allocates those requirements among its governments.

Santa Cruz did get a large target in the regional allocations (from AMBAG, the Association of Monterey Bay Area Governments). Coonerty argues Santa Cruz has “earned some room to slow down” and shouldn’t be held to those numbers because the city is doing relatively well on its specific state targets for low-income housing. 

But the city still lags behind on moderate and above-moderate housing. And Santa Cruz hit its lower-income targets only through building the same dense downtown developments that Coonerty is now attacking.

Santa Cruz’s housing requirement also is tied to workforce and racial diversity goals.  

State allocation methodology puts higher housing targets on wealthier and whiter places with an imbalance between housing and jobs, like Santa Cruz, in order to reduce economic and racial segregation. A large percentage of Santa Cruz’s workforce can’t afford to live here due to the lack of affordable housing, leading to long commutes with family, social and environmental impacts.

Santa Cruz likes to think of itself as liberal, tolerant and progressive. A famous book on city politics is entitled “The Leftmost City,” and you can see lots of bumper stickers saying “Keep Santa Cruz Weird,” and yard signs expressing support for Black Lives Matter, trans rights and racial and gender diversity.  

These are deeply held values for many people here.

But these progressive values are in conflict with opposition to housing development. 

Although neither mayoral candidate argues outright against housing, neither offers policies that match the scale and urgency Santa Cruz’s housing crisis requires. And while Coonerty offers generalized support for affordable housing, his harsh language about “Soviet-looking” development and pledge to fight against state laws and targets, and use “every legal tool available” against the Seabright project belie that support. 

Under state law, if Santa Cruz denies a project like Seabright, it could face millions of dollars in court fines.

New York’s Zohran Mamdani and progressive elected officials across America understand that increasing housing supply, of all sorts, is essential to make housing more affordable, along with strong tenant protections and other policies. But Santa Cruz’s own mayoral race suggests that lesson hasn’t yet reached this “leftmost city.”

One can only hope both mayoral candidates will absorb the housing affordability lessons Mamdani and other progressives have learned. Santa Cruz voters can adhere to their values and also expand housing supply.  

And its political leaders should be working to shed the ignominious title of America’s most expensive rental market, not endorsing policies that will enshrine it.

Richard McGahey is a senior fellow at the Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy at the New School in New York City. He is the former executive director of the U.S. Congressional Joint Economic Committee and the author of “Unequal Cities” (Columbia University Press, 2023). He lives part-time in Santa Cruz.