Santa Cruz Mayor Fed Keeley hosted the first of three public meetings on a potential March 2024 housing bond ballot measure, along with City Councilmembers Scott Newsome and Sandy Brown, Director of Economic Development Bonnie Lipscomb and city attorney Tony Condotti.
Housing
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
Toward a March 2024 housing bond measure in Santa Cruz
James Weller, a local housing advocate, thinks he has an answer to our community’s most vexing issue, the fact that most of us cannot afford to pay the exorbitant cost of housing. The state has mandated Santa Cruz County build more, Weller writes, but developers won’t build unless they can make a profit by charging high rents. “But what if we had a public subsidization fund so we could pay developers some fraction of their marginal cost per unit” so that more units could be low-rent dwellings, he asks.”Maybe we could pay them enough to make a profit on the deal.”
Posted inPolitics & Policy
Santa Cruz’s phased sweep of Pogonip homeless encampment to begin next week
Last fall, after the City of Santa Cruz finished clearing the Benchlands homeless encampment, many people began relocating to the Highway 9-adjacent city park known as Pogonip. Next week, the city will begin evicting people from Pogonip.
Posted inHousing & Development
Riverfront, first of three big housing developments along San Lorenzo River, is underway
Demolition has begun along Front Street in downtown Santa Cruz for the new complex to be known as the Riverfront Apartments. The Riverfront project represents a big leap forward in the city’s efforts to develop along the San Lorenzo River levee. It is the first of three projects planned for the Front Street corridor along the river between Soquel Avenue and Laurel Street.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
New housing is coming to our communities — be part of the process
The next six months will be transformative for Santa Cruz County. In that time, each city council and the county board of supervisors (for the unincorporated areas) will be adopting “housing elements” that will serve as a blueprint of how each community meets its state-mandated housing needs. The process is complex, write housing advocates Don Lane and Elizabeth Madrigal. But the decisions will affect everyone. It’s in everyone’s interest, they say, to get involved now.
Posted inPolitics & Policy
Santa Cruz to wait ‘several months’ to enforce oversized vehicle ban after Coastal Commission approval
Christopher Neely examines the next steps for the City of Santa Cruz’s oversized vehicle ordinance after the California Coastal Commission approved a one-year pilot last week.
Posted inPolitics & Policy
Santa Cruz Mayor Fred Keeley will leave it to residents to figure out 2024 affordable housing bond
Santa Cruz Mayor Fred Keeley says he plans to let community members lead on organizing the housing bond he has touted since he was on the campaign trail.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
Don’t trust the city: Oversized vehicle ordinance poses an existential threat to the unhoused
Reggie Meisler, an advocate for the unhoused, has a simple message for the California Coastal Commission members set to vote Thursday on the validity of Santa Cruz’s contentious oversized vehicle ordinance: Be wary. The city, he writes, has “had numerous opportunities to practice restraint” in ticketing and towing vulnerable people and has repeatedly proved itself untrustworthy. He says the ordinance is “discriminatory” and makes the lives of needy people worse.
Posted inPolitics & Policy
In the Public Interest: Is Santa Cruz’s housing plan too dependent on UCSC’s new development?
In this week’s edition of In the Public Interest, Christopher Neely examines how projects at UC Santa Cruz fit into the equation of the number of housing units the City of Santa Cruz is mandated to permit by 2031.
Posted inUncategorized
Santa Cruz City Council advances plan for more than 3,700 housing units — a fourfold increase — by 2031
It’s full speed ahead for the accelerated building of housing for the city of Santa Cruz over the next eight years. Plans long in the works call for development of more than 2,000 housing units along the city’s main corridors of Mission, River, Ocean and Water streets and Soquel Avenue. On Tuesday, the council unanimously approved the plan that now advances to state review.
