Santa Cruz YIMBY

Local policies matter. Impact fees, inclusionary requirements, and long approval timelines all affect feasibility. If projects don’t pencil, they don’t get built. Without changes to make housing easier to build across all income levels, our county will continue to fall short.

Jurisdictions should start by making base zoning viable: more height, more units, less parking, and by-right approvals. Projects shouldn’t need Density Bonus just to make basic math work.

It’s time for our annual Santa Cruz County housing progress roundup, Here’s a graph of the county-wide housing pace broken down by income level. The green bars are the RHNA targets and the gold is how many units we would build by 2031 if we keep up our current pace of production.

Housing Element comment to @VisitCarmel. The City is amending its Housing Element to avoid developing 100% affordable housing on City-owned sites. Carmel-by-the-Sea is 87% White and only 6% Latino, whereas Monterey County is 27% White and 60% Latino. drive.google.com/file/d/1ZemboE…

. @Yimby_Law @California_HCD @CSElmendorf @housingdefense

HCD has a choice: either reject the request and uphold the integrity of the housing element process — or set a precedent that cities and counties can rewrite the rules after projects are proposed. Housing policy across California may hinge on that decision.

Yesterday the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors voted to pursue a long-shot strategy to kill pending Builder’s Remedy housing projects in the county. Their plan: ask the state to backdate the county’s housing element compliance date again—almost 2 years after the fact🧵