Quick Take
Housing is taking center stage in Santa Cruz County’s June primaries and November elections, writes housing activist and former Santa Cruz mayor Don Lane. He worries that community debates are often clouded by misinformation. Here, he argues that many new downtown Santa Cruz developments are in fact affordable and part of a long-overdue housing push. He points to decades of underbuilding as the root of today’s shortage and rising costs. As voters head to the polls, he urges a fact-based conversation about who gets to live in the community.
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As Santa Cruz County heads toward another local election, the temperature is rising around one issue above all others: housing. Affordable housing, new development and who gets to live here have become central to how candidates define themselves and how voters make decisions.
I’ve spent years participating in these conversations and studying housing policy. One thing has become clear: Much of what we say to each other about housing simply isn’t accurate. Sometimes it’s an honest misunderstanding. Sometimes it’s rhetoric that clouds more than it clarifies. Either way, if we’re going to make good decisions as a community, we need to start with a shared set of facts.
Take one of the most common claims: that the new apartment buildings going up downtown aren’t affordable and will be filled by only “high-income tech workers from over the hill.”
That’s not just an exaggeration – it’s wrong.
Several of the largest new developments downtown are 100% rent-restricted affordable housing. That means every unit is priced for households earning well below the area’s median income. Projects like Pacific Station South, Cedar Street Apartments, Pacific Station North and the downtown library housing development together account for hundreds of below-market units – housing that is already occupied, under construction or soon to open.
In fact, between 2023 and 2028, Santa Cruz is on track to add roughly 1,000 rent-restricted affordable apartments. To put that in perspective, that’s about as many affordable units as the city produced in the previous six decades combined.
One reason this progress goes unrecognized is simple: These buildings don’t look like what people expect “affordable housing” to look like. They’re modern, multistory and often indistinguishable from market-rate developments. That’s a good thing.
But it also means people walk past them every day without realizing whom they’re actually built for.
Another misconception making the rounds is that new market-rate buildings aren’t filling up, and therefore shouldn’t be built. The example often cited is the apartment building at Laurel Street and Pacific Avenue.
Like most new developments, that building didn’t fill overnight. That’s normal. Large apartment buildings lease up over time, not all at once. Today, it has solid occupancy, consistent with similar properties. Using early vacancy as evidence of failure misunderstands how housing markets work.
Then there’s the question people often ask – sometimes sincerely, sometimes skeptically: “Is it really affordable?”
The answer depends on understanding how affordability is defined. Across local, state and federal programs, housing is considered affordable when a household pays no more than 30% of its income toward rent.
That standard is achieved in a few different ways. In fully affordable developments, rents are set based on income levels, whether for extremely low-, very low- or low-income households. In other cases, renters use housing vouchers, paying 30% of their income while a public agency covers the remainder. Different mechanisms, same outcome: rent tied directly to what people can realistically afford.
For example, a single person earning $2,000 a month would pay around $600 in rent. A two-person household earning $5,000 might pay about $1,500 for a one-bedroom. In Santa Cruz’s market, those numbers are dramatically below prevailing rents – and they make the difference between stability and displacement for many service workers, older adults and people with disabilities.
These are not abstract policies. They shape who gets to remain part of this community.
If we want to talk about issues, we need to have our facts lined up.
Don Lane is a former mayor of Santa Cruz. He serves on the governing board of Housing Matters and is a UCSC lecturer.
