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Affordable Housing Among the consequences of the skyrocketing housing costs in Western Sonoma County the last decade is a lack of affordable housing. In turn this has profound impacts on our schools, our commute patterns for workers, the demographic make-up of our communities and the emigration of our children, families, and workforce toward greener pastures where they can afford to live within the wages they earn with better schools, less stress and a higher quality of life. The population of Sonoma County has increased the last seven years by 4.2% or .60% per year. This is a relatively low rate; but in Western Sonoma County the population has actually gone down…there are fewer registered voters in West County today than their were in 1996. Most of the growth has been in the urban areas along Highway 101with an increasing number of Latinos whose needs are being underserved. We are increasingly seeing an “hourglass economy” with job growth concentrating at the top and the bottom of the labor market while the middle-income jobs are shrinking. What can we do to avoid this fate of gentrified older wealthier enclaves of homeowner’s in West County without young workers, families and children to look after us? Can we afford the consequences of most of our work force living far away from our communities and commuting long distances because they cannot find a place to live? There are creative and innovative solutions that we must pursue in order to continue to have younger families and workers and retirees living within our communities. We need affordable housing for a broad range of ages, races, lifestyles, and beliefs that celebrate the full array of this mosaic we call the West County lifestyle. In Maine they are actually offering tax incentives to keep their young people from moving away. Being from Iowa I would caution some of our would be movers that the price you pay for better schools and cheaper houses is sometimes Winters of -40 degree below zero with major snow storms and Summers of 100 degree heat with 95% humidity. Let’s work on a sustainable plan for affordable housing that provides for local people of all income levels. I am a builder and have a lifelong interest in affordable shelter, housing, co-housing and intentional communities. The average American household is no longer mom, dad and 3+ kids; a majority of our households are one or two persons and we need to build more accordingly to suit these needs. I have been working for many years on the Russian River Redevelopment Oversight Committee toward developing and funding affordable housing. I am also working with the Community Development Commission and the county Permit and Resource Management Department in developing elements with the General Plan 2020 toward affordable housing solutions. Part of the solution is “low cost apartments” which in my experience with government supervised and built apartments they end up costing more ($350-400,000) than if you just go buy them at market price from builders. The other part of the equation I think is that we need to leverage our limited housing dollars to encourage individual home owners to create second dwelling units, SRO’s (single room occupancy), and group living co-housing type arrangements. There is a serious lack of properly zoned housing in the County for residential care facilities for the elderly…not just assisted care facilities but plain simple housing for seniors…we are at the threshold of unprecedented numbers of retirees and we need housing for them. We should create a pilot program where maybe we allow for carving up some of these “McMansions” into kind of small co-housing facilities served by a coterie of roving staff. Most of our life on Earth we have lived in small tribes; should we experiment and encourage some measure of “tribal living” with some of our housing stock? Let’s work on keeping our communities strong and diverse through exploring new ideas toward creating affordable housing.
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