Lookout Santa Cruz: Who’s telling an accurate story on Santa Cruz’s Measure M?
By Don Lane
Measure M advocate Frank Barron and I seem to disagree on several things related to his height limit ballot measure, but we clearly agree on this: “The people of the city of Santa Cruz should not be fooled.” This is one of the opening lines in his recent Lookout commentary attempting to refute some things I and my affordable housing colleagues wrote in a recent op-ed.
The difference between Mr. Barron’s commentary and ours is that ours is based on verifiable facts and his is based on declarations not grounded in facts. Without verifiable facts, Mr. Barron tries to make those of us who are opposed to Measure M look bad by using terms like “hit piece” and “scare tactics.”
However, stating verifiable facts about the so-called “housing for people” measure is neither a scare tactic nor a hit piece. It is correctly informing voters about this sloppily written ballot measure that will do nothing to alleviate our housing crisis.
For instance, Mr. Barron tries to refute our point that his measure would lead to citywide votes on things like fence heights and backyard “granny units.” In his Lookout op-ed, he tries a clever substitution of a forward slash (/) to replace the word “or” in order to avoid exposing his error. Here’s the exact language of Measure M: “The Santa Cruz City Council shall not adopt amendments to the City’s General Plan or Zoning Ordinance that increase the allowable height limits or Floor Area Ratios (F.A.R.) for development projects” without city voter approval.
His aggressive attempt to refute our points omits this key fact: Under city law, fences needing a permit or second-story backyard granny units needing a permit are “development projects.” Thus, changing the zoning ordinance to allow for extra height on these will require a citywide vote.
But don’t take my word for it. Ask the city planning director and he’ll tell you the same. Who do you think is a better authority on zoning and development issues, the city’s top publicly accountable planning professional or the retired planner who helped write Measure M behind closed doors?
Compounding his error, Mr. Barron conflates the cost of his group’s campaign effort with the actual cost to our community for adding a measure to the election ballot for voters. When the city places a measure on the ballot, the County Elections Department charges the City of Santa Cruz (and its taxpayers) on average $170,000 to cover the cost of the election. So, despite what Mr. Barron claims, the cost for each election is substantial and will be repeated each time a zoning ordinance amendment is needed to change height or density rules on any development project, not just the larger ones.
Next, Mr. Barron goes into the weeds in trying to explain why his proposed increase in affordable housing requirements will work.
He is correct about the state law impacting the final amount of “inclusionary” (affordable) housing required. Yet he completely sidesteps the correct statement we made in our op-ed: High inclusionary rates have stifled housing development, and several cities with higher requirements have either lowered their requirement or are studying the problems with requirements that are too high.
The proof is out there: Cities with inclusionary rates that are too high are not building nearly enough housing.
Again, the evidence exists. Our commentary last month provided the San Francisco example. You can also look at Marin County to see the same thing happening. Setting a high rate for inclusionary housing is just a form of wishful thinking and led to the perhaps unintentionally deceptive “housing for people” label of this ballot measure.
Wishful thinking is great for people who already own their own homes, such as the authors of Measure M. But, it doesn’t help for low- and middle-income wage-earners looking for rental housing.
By the way, I heard from more than a few people who found Mr. Barron’s claim that my team was using scare tactics ironic. When his team was running around town to secure the required number of signatures to get their initiative on the ballot, they scared a lot of folks by suggesting 22-story buildings could be going up in Santa Cruz. In fact, there is not a single proposal for a 22-story building in Santa Cruz, or even ones for 17 or 13 stories.
The city has a website that shows every development proposal in the pipeline. There’s nothing listed that comes even close to the “scary” heights Mr. Barron’s group indicated.
It was quite notable that Mr. Barron didn’t even try to refute our statement about the absence of genuine affordable housing advocates (people with real track records and professionally based background on this issue) within his campaign. It seems he has nothing to offer here.
Equally notable: No effort was made by Mr. Barron to refute what is probably the biggest mistake in Measure M – that the measure will make it harder to build taller buildings downtown (clearly one of their main intentions). This, in turn, will put pressure on homebuilders to build with greater height and density in other neighborhoods in Santa Cruz in order to meet state requirements to build more housing.
I think just about everyone agrees that downtown is the better location in terms of neighborhood aesthetics, transportation and sustainability.
Measure M would be a major mistake for Santa Cruz if approved by voters. It will move the focus of housing development away from downtown and closer to neighborhoods. It will require costly elections. It will do nothing to increase the amount of housing we so badly need – and that the state is requiring us to build.
Worse, it will actually discourage building new homes for people who live and/or work here and need decent homes.
This measure is a battle between those who care more about building heights and those who care more about the housing needs of the people who make Santa Cruz a great community. I’m glad to count myself among those who care more about people than about the size of buildings.