Quick Take
Laura Lee, who supports a yes vote on Santa Cruz’s Measure M, believes developers want to turn the city into a profit center at the expense of quality of life. She cites articles outlining how hedge funds and sports franchises distort community livability by overdevelopment. “Are justice, diversity and caring for others and our environment secondary to winning?” she writes.
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Measure M is more than building heights and a 5% increase of affordable housing. It’s history and civics lessons about the consequences of voters losing control of local government decisions to moneyed interests.
“It doesn’t pencil out,” a mantra of the No on M campaign, deceives Santa Cruz voters to avoid revealing other factors and deflect significant issues.
Measure M is a wake-up call about overbuilding that stresses our water supply, traffic congestion, wealth inequality and environment. Developers are not thinking enough about these issues or livability. History shows it is unlikely that negative impacts will be adequately mitigated when Santa Cruz is viewed as a profit center, and less costly handouts can pacify city staff and councilmembers.
It’s critical to understand how hedge funds and corporate control of housing led the United Nations to investigate their practices. A 2017 report states that “housing and commercial real estate have become the ‘commodity of choice’ for corporate finance, and the pace at which the financial corporations are taking over housing and real estate is staggering.”
Harlan Crow’s hedge fund, the $7.7 billion Golden State Warriors franchise and the abundant resources of Silicon Valley are local examples. These alliances with city insiders support economic theories that create gentrification and add hardship to our workforce. In a 2021 Medium article, Patrick Range McDonald details this pattern, and the recklessness of trickle-down economics in housing policies. His article articulates how high-paid and well-funded YIMBYs convince voters their policies promote affordability while the evidence proves otherwise.
Good news: There is a bill by Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon that bans the systematic purchasing of property by hedge funds which exacerbates the housing crisis and underpins housing unaffordability and wealth inequality. Unfortunately, it will not pass in time to prevent the corporate takeover of Santa Cruz development.
Unsurprisingly, the Warriors franchise has giveaways and advertisements to promote their permanent stadium. The deal among the city, Santa Cruz Seaside Company and the Warriors portends the unlimited construction of expensive high-rises to protect their profits and still build their arena. Yet citizens are left with more congestion and higher cost of infrastructure and maintenance.
A perfect example is Santa Clara’s legal battle against the San Francisco 49ers franchise for not paying Levi’s Stadium maintenance and security costs due the city. In a June 2023 story for SFGate, Dennis Young provides an in-depth account of the money flow into city council elections which replaced councilmembers who opposed the franchise.
Now the 49ers are aiming to remove the elected police chief in favor of an appointee whose support they can count on.
Further evidence is in an article in The New York Times by David Chen quoting urban studies professor Domenic Vitiello, “sports projects have not revitalized downtowns or added substantially to city tax bases relative to the outlay of public subsidies.”
The persistent and convoluted ways opponents of Measure M distort the facts reveals how much profiteers and local insiders are out to win. Can democracy survive in a culture where greed and deceit thrive?
Are justice, diversity and caring for others and our environment secondary to winning?
The long-term consequences of overbuilding put at risk the value of Santa Cruz’s beauty, livability, sustainability and resilience during health and climate emergencies.
Accurate news, education and the right to vote give residents agency and power in our battles for a functional democracy, and historically why voting yes on Measure M is so meaningful.
Laura Carol Lee has lived in Santa Cruz since 1981. She and her husband, Jeffree, recently retired after 45 years in financial services. Laura holds bachelor of science degrees in psychology and education from the University of Pittsburgh and taught elementary school in New Jersey. After moving to California, she worked for Xerox in San Francisco as a corporate trainer. Once settled in Santa Cruz, she started teaching natural foods cooking, holistic health, then communication skills. Currently, she coaches individuals and small groups about the Enneagram system for personal and spiritual development.