Santa Cruz Mayor Fred Keeley’s tax doesn’t put community first

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Santa Cruz deserves housing solutions rooted in community — not in top-down policies that sound good but leave locals behind. The “Workforce Housing Affordability Act” championed by Santa Cruz Mayor Fred Keeley may claim to address the housing crisis, but beneath the surface, you’ll find a policy that risks reinforcing the very inequities it claims to solve.

Has the community even been consulted on the crafting of this tax? Or are we once again being asked to foot the bill for a plan we had no real voice in shaping? 

Supporters of Keeley’s measure submitted 4,170 signatures to the city clerk to qualify for the November 2025 ballot. But this wasn’t a grassroots initiative that involved working families, community members or locals in the political process. This was a top-down, consultant-driven initiative crafted with input from political insiders and special interests. Those included in planning meetings were not the people most impacted by the housing crisis and definitely not the minority community. 

As an educator in Santa Cruz City Schools, a community organizer, and someone who’s run for city council, I’ve spent years listening to our residents, and I hear one consistent message: people want a pathway to home ownership, not just more unaffordable rentals. They want stability, dignity and the chance to build generational wealth. 

Keeley’s tax falls short of delivering that. 

The Workforce Housing Affordability Act includes a $96 annual parcel tax on each property within Santa Cruz city limits. It also implements a real estate transfer tax on sales over $1.8 million, ranging from 0.5% to 2%, with a cap of $200,000 per transaction. These thresholds will adjust annually with inflation.

However, the tax measure is regressive and the cost of burden will be passed down to working families, retirees and homeowners. The measure offers no real enforcement mechanisms for its workforce housing. That means there is nothing ensuring the tax revenue will result in true workforce housing — affordable, accessible homes for Santa Cruz’s teachers, service workers, health care staff and working families. The language is vague, the oversight is minimal, and it’s crafted to serve Mayor Keeley’s own political self-interest. 

There are also no guarantees in this tax, the funds could easily be diverted into developments that check the “workforce” box on paper while pricing out the very people they claim to help. The money will go into the general fund, where it is typically overseen by the city council and city staff without any real process for civilian oversight, giving the mayor broad discretion to use public funds in ways that can serve political self-interest rather than the community’s most pressing needs. Mayor Keeley dropped $50,000 of his own money from an unexpected inheritance into a campaign meant to reflect the will of the people. To me, that kind of personal spending from a nonpartisan public official turns a public vote into a heavily influenced, establishment-driven agenda.

This is a regressive tax. It impacts everyday Santa Cruzans — longtime residents, working families, grandparents and parents passing down homes, first-time homebuyers — not the mega-developers reshaping the city’s skyline. Those developers can absorb these costs or shift them downstream, while residents bear the brunt.

A real danger is that this tax could worsen the housing crisis in Santa Cruz. It increases the financial burden on local builders, first-time homeowners, working families and seniors — without proven guarantees of affordability. We risk slowing down housing production, pushing prices up even further and deterring the kind of creative, community-rooted housing solutions we desperately need. 

Yes, we need bold housing action — but we also need diverse housing options. That means investing in first-time homebuyer assistance for locals, co-ops and pathways to home ownership that build generational wealth in working-class families who’ve long been excluded from housing stability in Santa Cruz. 

Even more troubling, oversight of how these $5 million funds get spent is left solely to city staff — without a formal citizen oversight committee, independent audit requirements or enforceable transparency measures. In a city where trust in government is already strained, this creates a closed-door system with no public accountability. If this tax is supposed to serve the people, the people deserve a say in how it’s used. 

Yes, the city council must, by law, spend money only on voter-approved purposes, and there are audits and public budget hearings that should provide transparency. But having rules doesn’t guarantee that they’ll be followed in the public’s interests. When major decisions, like this regressive tax and the Downtown Plan Expansion, are pushed through by political insiders with minimal community involvement, it raises real concerns for taxpayers who will bear the burden. 

We’ve already had three regressive tax increases in the past year. Why must we burden longtime residents, locals and working families with another tax? The city government is supposed to serve the interests of the people, and not the special interests that have had a say in how this initiative was formed. 

The city and the mayor believe the community was consulted. But only partisan groups and representatives of certain special interests were involved in the formation of the tax initiative. There were no true grassroots outreach plans that sought to involve the public. Respectfully, these partisan groups and special interests do not represent the perspective of all our community members. The voices of homeowners, working families, renters and minorities were left out, and it’s important that we prioritize their concerns over special interests and partisan groups. 

At this moment, the voices of the people are absent, and our voices are being replaced by a quietly destructive and politically self-serving agenda, orchestrated by the mayor and the establishment. Again, I find it reprehensible that Mayor Keeley donated substantial funds to jumpstart this destructive initiative. It’s the kind of influence many criticized Mayor Keeley for when he rubber-stamped the Downtown Plan Expansion, which will include eight-story luxury apartment complexes in our small town and a new Warriors stadium, prioritizing out-of-town private profits over community needs. 

With the collapse of the Santa Cruz Wharf, an unsafe downtown and costly railway development, there is growing public frustration in our city. Keeley’s empty mayoral tenure has failed to deliver on real progress. Now, he and his political partners are trying to bail out the city council’s political missteps and budget deficit at the taxpayers’ expense. 

This tax is less about workforce housing and more about protecting a failing status quo.

Santa Cruz can’t afford more red tape disguised as reform. We need homes, more home ownership opportunities, and real affordability — not more barriers that the local government openly but silently forces. We’ve seen this story before: new taxes pitched as progressive, but implemented in ways that favor developers, the status quo and politically connected firms. Meanwhile, locals, retirees and working families get left paying the bill often for projects that don’t prioritize community input or equity in access.

I reject what Mayor Keeley stands for: a politics of empty promises, insider deals and backroom decisions that sells our city out to the highest bidder. I urge voters to oppose Mayor Keeley’s regressive tax. 

Keeley’s tax sounds like a fix — but it lacks accountability, lacks transparency, and lacks the vision our city truly needs. Let’s reject policies that treat housing like a numbers game and instead demand solutions that put people, equity, and home ownership first.

Hector Marin is an educator with Santa Cruz City Schools and a community organizer. He ran for Santa Cruz City Council in March 2024.