Santa Cruz Sentinel: Guest Commentary | Don’t be fooled – find the facts, and vote No on Santa Cruz Measure M
By Tim Willoughby, Elaine Johnson and Diana Alfaro
Measure M, if it passes, could taint the city of Santa Cruz with years of negative consequences.
Affordable Housing NOW, Housing Santa Cruz County and Santa Cruz YIMBY, the primary advocates for affordable housing in the county, urge you to vote “No” on the measure because it would reduce future affordable housing instead of increasing it.
The city commissioned Keyser Marston to do an impartial analysis. The report is detailed, and it explored the many complexities that should have been examined before writing the initiative. While the intention was to make zoning and general plan changes subject to a community vote, it is highly likely that the opposite could result.
The report documents a variety of examples, what is important to understand is that the mandated votes could, without realizing it, undo parts of the eight-year cycle Housing Element that the city recently certified and the Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) approved. Such votes could lead to the Housing Element being decertified. As a consequence, the HCD penalty is the institution of the Builders Remedy that takes away most local control over projects, the opposite of what the initiative writers intended.
The city went to great lengths to achieve ProHousing designation, which opens up state funding for 100% affordable housing developments.
Santa Cruz desperately needs funding to subsidize affordable housing projects if there are to be any. Measure M reduces that chance, because some zoning changes needed for a 100% affordable housing project might require a citywide vote and affordable housing builders would likely not want to go through that expensive and risky process, preferring to do projects in other cities instead.
The measure puts the burden of the cost of elections for citywide votes on the city, costs estimated to be around $100,000 a year, money better spent on building affordable housing, not on trying to stop it.
The measure’s second part, raising the inclusionary rate from 20% to 25%, is more likely to kill projects than it would be to increase the number of affordable units. It may not seem like much of a change, but at the existing 20% rate the only projects that are financially feasible are ones using the density bonus system with smaller units. The crafters of the measure want to limit the height of projects but adding 5% to the inclusionary rate in a density project will automatically allow more units in a project (the bonus) adding additional floors.
Read the Keyser Marston report before you vote! It’s quite clear that this measure has too many unintended consequences.
Don’t be fooled by the measure’s proponents — it would reduce the production of affordable housing units instead of increasing them and it would likely take away, rather than add, local control over projects.
Tim Willoughby is with Affordable Housing NOW, Elaine Johnson with Housing Santa Cruz County, and Diana Alfaro with Santa Cruz YIMBY. The Keyser Marston report can be viewed at https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24369215-housing-for-people-impact-report-santa-cruz-city-council-january-2024#document/p12.