Guest Commentary | Initiative does not support affordable housing
Housing Santa Cruz County , Affordable Housing NOW, Santa Cruz YIMBY , Housing Choices, and other individuals working to create affordable housing strongly oppose the “Our Downtown Our Future” initiative.
We urge you to read their initiative and compare the facts of the Library Housing Mixed Use Project with the initiative’s propaganda. If you were hoodwinked by their pitch and signed the petition, you can have your name removed by calling the City Clerk, 831-420-5030.
As advocates for affordable housing we are appalled that those who want to kill the Downtown Library Project would use the gimmick of implying their initiative is about affordable housing.
Initiative proponents are trying to convince you that their scheme would produces more affordable housing. It would not. However, if you read the details, you will be struck by the obvious intention, to take away possible locations for the farmers market thus forcing it onto only one site, all done without the concurrence of the farmers market board. The city has been working with the Farmers Market for years to establish a permanent site that meets the farmers market needs. The primary location is lot 7. The proposed initiative would prevent the market from locating there.
The initiative claims that its provisions for prioritizing city parking lots for affordable housing will somehow create that housing. Instead of talk, the city is already using city-owned land to produce new affordable housing: Pacific Station North, 95 units. Pacific Station South, 70 units, the Library Project, 125 units.
Additionally, the parking lot the city leases across the street from the new library project will close this summer and construction begun on 65 affordable housing units.
The city also began a lively and engaging process to hear from the community on preferences for the use of the current library site. Feedback showed a strong preference for affordable housing and community commons that could also be a long-term home for the market. This is a site that could easily accommodate homes for another 75 low-income households. The initiative would eliminate those possibilities. Choosing between housing essential workers, seniors or the homeless in our community and a second-rate compromised library building remodel, we choose people.
One fact initiative proponents conveniently ignore is that some of the lots the fanciful initiative would give preference for housing are too small for viable affordable housing projects. It typically takes five to eight years, not including construction, to turn an idea into a project.
The Library Housing Project is in the last year of that process. Let’s not give that away for one or two imaginary projects that exist only in the minds of people who have no expertise in creating affordable housing.
The real target of the initiative is the parking portion of the project that does not add a single new parking space to downtown, it simply replaces some but not all the spaces in lots that will be closing. This replacement parking would provide some parking for four affordable housing projects with 355 units, all close to construction stage. The projects will not have parking lots, allowed by city incentives to reduce vehicle use. This also because it significantly reduces the cost of building and increases the chances of acquiring funding.
Submitted by: Don Lane-HSCC, Tim Willoughby -Affordable housing NOW, Rafa Sonnenfeld-YIMBY, Andrew Goldenkrantz-COPA leader, Jan Stokley- Housing Choices.