Santa Cruz Mayor Fred Keeley on Measure C’s long road to success and next steps

A day after Measure C proponents declared victory in their effort to pass the city-backed measure to fund affordable housing, Santa Cruz Mayor Fred Keeley was elated Friday morning as he stepped into his office at city hall downtown. 

“My feelings are of joy and gratitude,” he said, sitting at his desk. “Joyful that our city found the right combination of revenue and spending on housing and homelessness.” 

Measure C, called the Workforce Housing Affordability Act of 2025, will raise about $4.5 million a year through a parcel tax and a real estate transfer tax on home sales. The victory comes after other affordable housing measures failed in recent years: the city’s 2022 empty homes tax and the 2018 countywide ballot Measure H. 

In his 2022 mayoral campaign, Keeley promised to bring an affordable housing measure before city voters. For the next two years, he and local leaders hammered out the substance of the measure in meetings and negotiations with landlords, real estate industry professionals, renters and UC Santa Cruz students. Eventually, he passed off the campaign to others to lead, and Housing Santa Cruz County executive director Elaine Johnson organized the effort to get the measure on the ballot. 

This time, 54% of city of Santa Cruz voters supported the affordable housing measure — trouncing a competing measure sponsored by the real estate industry. Measure B earned just 12% approval. 

The Santa Cruz County Association of Realtors announced its competing measure in March, after city officials and housing advocates had already negotiated with the realtors. Keeley called the move the “dirtiest local political trick” he’d ever seen in the city, and worried it was a major blow to his coalition’s efforts. 

Looking back now, Keeley thinks several factors contributed to Measure C’s victory. First, he says having a statewide measure on the ballot was “very helpful” in getting voters who are sympathetic to affordable housing issues to the polls. The statewide redistricting measure, Proposition 50, will redraw California’s congressional maps in favor of Democrats to counter redistricting in Republican-led states like Texas. 

Also integral to the win, he said, was a better campaign strategy than Measure B’s, as well as a tax proposal that voters saw as an improvement over previous efforts to fund affordable housing. 

“It’s taken years for the community to get the right combination of content and timing,” Keeley said. “Last time there was a housing measure on the ballot, the economy was fine, but the measure was the wrong measure,” like the 2022 empty homes tax.

The strategy  

Keeley says he believes that overall, Measure C “had the better argument” and maintained a boots-on-the-ground campaign through the end. On the other hand, he says the Measure B campaign attempted to mislead voters and didn’t appear to campaign beyond social media in its final days. 

The opposition was motivated by “‘Let’s confuse the voters,’” Keeley said. “So I was concerned — I’ve been around this for a very, very long time. When you have competing measures, it’s a higher, more steep hill to climb.” 

Based on his observations, Keeley believes the Measure B campaign’s outreach efforts peaked too soon, while the Measure C campaign continued in full force, knocking on doors, posting on social media and sending mail to voters. 

“I think they peaked about two weeks out and we peaked a few days out,” he said. 

Keeley said the strategy of placing a competing measure on the ballot probably confused some voters, but in the end it didn’t work.

The ‘right’ measure 

Measure C won a simple majority with 54%, which means 46% of Santa Cruz city voters still said no to funding affordable housing and addressing homelessness. The 2022 empty homes tax, Measure N, failed with 54% against. 

Keeley said he thinks voters rejected Measure N because they saw it as a “government overreach,” not because they didn’t support funding affordable housing. 

“The voters said, ‘Oh, my goodness, that’s too much intrusion. I don’t care how good the cause is, I’m not supporting telling the government how many days I’m in my house,’” he said.

The decision to place the initiative on the ballot by gathering signatures was also strategic, he said. Voter-sponsored measures must pass by a simple majority. If the city council had voted to place Measure C on the ballot, it would’ve had to pass by a two-thirds supermajority. 

Measure H, which county officials put on the ballot to issue $140 million in bonds for affordable housing, failed in 2018 despite receiving 55% of the vote — much of that coming from the city of Santa Cruz — because it had to pass by a two-thirds supermajority.

Keeley said the organizers behind Measure C were determined to avoid a similar fate. They figured the additional effort required to gather signatures for a citizen-led measure would pay off with a lower threshold to win.

As for the 46% who didn’t support Measure C, Keeley said he’ll work to understand what those voters might be looking for. 

What’s known about how it will work 

When Measure C goes into effect next year, Keeley said the measure will raise funds slowly at first. An oversight committee will ensure funds are used responsibly and according to the terms of the measure. Measure C directs the city to spend 87% of the funds on affordable housing, 10% on homelessness and 3% on overhead administrative costs. 

“Every penny that gets spent has to be approved in public,” he said. 

The Santa Cruz City Council will decide how the funding will be spent, but the city administration will consider stakeholder input and make proposals, he said. 

But he also emphasized Measure C is about increasing the number of affordable units that developers add to their projects, and making those units more deeply affordable, as opposed to building more and more housing. 

In other words, he said the new taxes should make the mandated housing that Santa Cruz is already required to build more affordable — whether people want it to be built or not. 

Keeley said the funding won’t help the City of Santa Cruz build an affordable housing project: “We don’t have enough money in this thing over time to do that.” 

But he said the new funding can increase the number of affordable units in projects that developers propose. If a builder plans to include 20 affordable units in a 100-unit building, the Measure C funds could be used to add another five affordable units to raise that total to 25. Or the city could go to another builder and say, “You have moderate- and low-priced units, what if we want to make those very low and extremely low? We’ll be your partner doing that.” 

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