Even bright people get confused about Santa Cruz housing – especially now in Seabright

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The housing developer Workbench has put forward another controversial proposal for a multi-story housing complex in Santa Cruz. This one is apparently going by the name “Bright Plaza.”

As I’ve watched information about this housing project roll out, I’ve noticed an abundance of confusion on display throughout our community.

Neighbors and some local politicians seem to be confused about the proposed project itself. 

The multi-step application process with the city planning department is confusing to almost anyone who hasn’t been part of the process before. So lots of folks have seen images of very early “massing” drawings for the proposal and confused those with a true design for the building – a design that doesn’t exist yet. They’ve read about the preliminary application for the project and misunderstood this application as a formal proposal. 

The formal proposal will be created and submitted after an upcoming, city-mandated community meeting.

The developer, Workbench, is confused about a few things, too.

There is a wonderful community spirit in Santa Cruz that wants to sustain the things we love about our community. Workbench believes it’s building housing to help the community, but pays minimal lip service (or offers disdain) to legitimate community concerns about losing things community members say matter to them. 

Moreover, Workbench is completely confused about how to communicate with the community and with local government. 

Its leaders seem not to realize that projecting entitlement and righteousness is an impediment to achieving their objectives and our community’s affordable housing objectives.

Even a local government with few tools to limit housing developments will use those tools to resist developers that aren’t good partners with the community and their local government. This is happening right before our eyes today.

And then there’s the confusion reigning in the community at large about many housing issues.

So many people mistakenly think that all the new housing development is done by greedy developers building expensive housing for wealthy techies based over the hill. They confuse the 360 expensive apartments recently built downtown with the more than 400 rent-restricted affordable apartments downtown that have been completed in the past couple of years or are under construction right now.

There’s similar confusion about how affordable these rent-restricted affordable apartments are.  

I constantly hear people say they aren’t really affordable. I wish they would acknowledge that the most recently completed affordable project downtown has studio apartments that rent for about $1,000 per month. The average rent in an unrestricted studio in Santa Cruz is around $2,500. I like to believe that no one is confused about which one is truly affordable to a wage worker or young family in Santa Cruz. 

Another area that needs some clearing up is the question of why higher-density housing projects are often located at sites such as Seabright and Soquel avenues. Many transportation experts, city planners, senior advocacy groups, affordable housing experts, social justice advocates and green city activists agree that the following three things make up a good location for higher-density affordable housing: 

• Walkable retail stores nearby (perhaps a grocery store, a pharmacy, some restaurants).
• Good bus service (perhaps every 20 to 30 minutes seven days a week between early morning and late at night). 
• An elementary school close by for families with kids.  

This Seabright site is objectively a better than average site for rental housing because it has all those retail and transportation and education items in place. 

There are legit reasons to oppose high density at this location, but there are plenty of good reasons for it to be located in this spot. 

Even with the loss of local businesses, on the “bright” site, the markets, the school, the buses and the pharmacy will remain. (This is not an argument for ignoring those businesses – simply a reminder that key nearby features will be present if housing is built here.)

Here’s another one that clearly has people confused: The location of four-, five- and six-story housing complexes outside of downtown. Here are some of them:

• Nueva Vista in the Beach Flats is five stories in a small residential neighborhood.
• Villa Nueva on Ocean Street – near Hotel Paradox – is six stories and has been there for decades. 
• Seaside at Delaware, a UC Santa Cruz staff housing complex just completed on the far Westside off Delaware Avenue, is five stories. 
• Ocean Street Apartments on lower Ocean is four stories.
• Harvey West Studios on Coral Street is five stories.
• 831 Water Street is under construction at five stories.
• The new school employees housing project on Swift Street will be four stories when completed.

These medium-rise apartment buildings might not fit everywhere, but they do have a place in our community and they have for many years … even if none of the ones listed above happen to be near your home. Please note that these complexes are spread throughout the city and are not just on one side of town.

I suspect there’s also some confusion about why a community would choose to have lower-income housing in areas besides downtown. Here’s my attempt at clearing this up: The history of concentrating all the lower-income people in a community into one area is not a positive history.  

Consider the history of “ghettoization” and segregation. These are not the hallmarks of a healthy community. Nor are they features of a just society.  

Beyond this, a healthy downtown also needs a mix of housing types.  

Downtown is a great location for higher-density affordable housing, but I don’t think it helps the downtown economy to have it dominated by lower-income housing. I think Santa Cruz is doing pretty well in maintaining a housing mix downtown right now, and we should continue to maintain a balance going forward.

I have to say that I’m confused, too, about the language various folks are using in this debate. 

I’m trying to figure out what “iconic” means considering how it’s been recently tossed around. 

For most of us in Santa Cruz, the Giant Dipper is iconic. Our two lighthouses. The bridge at Natural Bridges State Beach. The steeple of Holy Cross Church or the whale sculpture at the Museum of Natural History.  

But somehow a good Ace Hardware store –- one that is very similar in substance to two other good Ace Hardware stores in town – has become an “iconic” business in some of the debate. 

I think these businesses are important, but they don’t really reach the level of iconic.  

Similarly, many who oppose the Seabright project are not knee-jerk anti-development “NIMBYs.” Many would support a more modest-sized housing project in the Seabright location.  

This kind of language mobilizes advocates on both sides and has become normalized.  However, mischaracterizing some of those we disagree with and using hyperbole rarely helps us work together toward positive outcomes.

The ultimate community confusion around projects like the Seabright proposal is the understanding of what a relatively tall building with lots of affordable apartments means to a community. 

For some people, the new apartment building is seen as a very bothersome new structure that obstructs a view or reduces one’s ability to park on the public street rather than the driveway.  For others, there’s a focus on the fact that the building would be a home for people living in our community.  

People who make your coffee or check you in at the medical office or deal with the waste your household generates. Kids going to school with your kids or grandkids. Perhaps longtime local elders whose pensions are too small to cover sky-high rents. To put it simply, these buildings that upset some folks so much also make some other folks’ lives so much better.

One might even consider that a positive view of new affordable apartment buildings is especially true for that older homeless woman who’s been on a housing waiting list for four years while subsisting in her car and then near the river levee. And for that young man who just aged out of foster care in Santa Cruz but has no family to help him afford his first apartment.  

Stable affordable housing transforms the lives of people fortunate enough to find it. 

I implore even those who fight larger housing projects to remember this, even if you are going to continue to oppose some or all of them. If we want to reduce homelessness in our community, it does require us to lean into building affordable housing.

A seasoned (and not too naïve!) commentator like me realizes that this bit of writing is not going to end the heated debate and confusion about the Seabright project and other multi-story projects around town. Confusion seems inevitable to some degree in this era of unfiltered and unsubstantiated social media posts – but confusion need not be the central element in these community discussions.

I think we can do better as a community at becoming well-informed about housing issues and proposals in spite of the confusing claims and divisive behavior that occur during a local election or advocacy campaign. 

Thoughtful debate backed by reliable information could actually help us create the kind of community we all aspire to have.

Don Lane is an affordable housing advocate, ice cream lover and former mayor of Santa Cruz.