July 2022 Newsletter

😎 It's summertime - we hope you get a chance to relax and recharge for the pro-housing work ahead!  😎

Election Results!

We are still waiting on the official results but it is clear that voters overwhelmingly said β€œNO” to Measure D (D for Greenway Deception) at the ballot box in June. From every part of the county!

Several of our endorsed candidates are moving on to the November election: - Shebreh Kalantari-Johnson (District 3 Supervisor), Felipe Hernandez (District 4 Supervisor) and Gail Pellerin (Assembly District 28).

Breaking News: Two measures are approved to be on the City of Santa Cruz ballot.

Background: Measures on empty homes, library head to Santa Cruz ballot | Santa Cruz Local


(Santa Cruz YIMBY June meet up at Abbott Square)

July is YIMBY Action Membership Month - stay tuned for more information on events we will be hosting.

If you have an idea for a pro-housing event, let us know at santacruzyimby@gmail.com


 Local Housing News

The Park Ave Project was awarded $10.7 million of State Homekey funding! This project offers 36 homes to those experiencing homelessness, including veterans, youth out of foster care and families.

🏘 🏘 🏘

Santa Cruz City Downtown Expansion Plan - On June 14, the Santa Cruz City Council gave the city planning staff the go ahead with planning for increased housing and a potentially permanent home for the Warriors. The Downtown Expansion Plan is intended to better connect the downtown area to the beach and riverfront with zoning for more housing, the arena, civic spaces and modifications to enhance the pedestrian connection to the river and beach. The proposed plan had varying building heights that would yield ~1800 much-needed homes, which got scaled back to ~1600.

🌳 🌳 🌳

Watsonville Downtown Expansion Plan On June 30th, the City of Watsonville held a community meeting for the draft Downtown Watsonville Specific Plan (DWSP), a planning document and tool to implement the City's General Plan. Main features of the DWSP include encouraging transit oriented development in order to decrease car dependency, reduce local and regional traffic congestion, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, provide multi-modal access to and from Downtown Watsonville, as well as other improvements. Under the DWSP, it is projected that Downtown Watsonville can accommodate for 3,910 new homes. Community members who wish to comment on the DWSP can do so directly on the plan itself (Chapters 1-4, Chapters 5-8), or via email to downtown.specific.plan@cityofwatsonville.org by July 14th, 2022.

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Housing Element Update - The Santa Cruz City Council recently adopted a resolution(PDF) to guide the Housing Element development.  It’s worth a full read - it touches on Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing, incentivizing higher density housing, getting to more affordable housing through by-right approval, alternative inclusionary approaches, reducing barriers to development including parking minimums and MORE.  We applaud the council's adoption of such a bold document by a 5-2 vote (CM Cummings and Brown were nay).

🏘 🚢🌳

Santa Cruz County Sustainability Update - The County Planning Commission continues to have study sessions on the  Santa Cruz County Sustainability Update. The Sustainability Update and the Housing Element are two critical planning opportunities to enable more housing in our County. The rezoning and standards that the county adopts through the Sustainability Update allows the county to begin addressing the housing crisis immediately.
The County is hearing from neighborhood groups that want to reduce the zoning and standards such as height, FAR and density. Each of you should provide feedback to the County that they must maximize zoning and development standards like height, FAR and density for sustainable growth - there is an urgent need for more housing NOW. Please track upcoming sessions and provide your feedback on the SCC Sustainability Update page.

Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT)

California is well on its way to measuring environmental impact using vehicle miles traveled (VMT). In terms of climate action, this is HUGE. We are able to prioritize projects that will now lead to less traffic and less pollution.

Caltrans, the California Department of Transportation, now recognizes that highway widening isn't working and is in fact making it much tougher for us to get out of traffic, pollution, noise, crashes, and the HIGH amounts of maintenance expense for large roads.

The Santa Cruz City Council recently updated the city’s implementation guidelines for VMT impact measurement (req'd by SB 743). This update adds all supportive housing types whose residents are unlikely to drive and naturally have very low VMT.

What are other ways to reduce VMT?  Appendix B of the city’s SB 743 Implementation summarizes strategies along with their maximum VMT reduction. A few that show potential for large VMT reduction include School Carpool Program (15% max), Bicycle Infrastructure Strategies (cumulative is 15% max) and Parking Strategies (over 26% max!) 

Caltrans "Rethinking How We Build So Californians Can Drive Less"


Housing for people, not cars

One of the bills making its way through the legislature is AB 2097 which reduces housing costs and air pollution by eliminating expensive parking mandates on new homes built near high-quality transit. Eliminating these costly parking mandates will give Californians more choices about whether they want to pay for parking, or have lower-cost housing in walkable, transit-accessible neighborhoods.

  • Parking makes building housing more expensive - each parking spot can add $40,000 or more to the cost of construction.

  • Parking mandates force buildings apart and make it harder for cities to evolve away from auto dependence.

  • Let's use space for living, not parking.

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August 2022 Newsletter

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June 2022 Newsletter