As convenient as it would be to have a single scapegoat to hang the problems on like the dreaded "tech industry" my experience is that housing shortages in Santa Cruz is a complex multi factor problem. Some example contributing factors:
- UC Santa Cruz has increased enrollment to 19,500 students with only just around half of them living on campus. Living on campus is relatively expensive at $1940 for room & board to share a room [1,2]
- Considering Santa Cruz itself has just around 65,000 residents the half of students living off campus make up 15% of population
- Certainly people commute over to tech for higher pay, but according to HUD that number has climbed just 4% from 26-30% between 2005 to 2015 [3]
- Santa Cruz itself greatly limits development with annual permits averaging around 250 for the past 10 years and almost all single family homes and townhomes rather than higher density [4]
- California's entire real estate market has been warped by Prop 13 which fixes real estate taxes to the time property was purchased with limited increases [5]. This incentivizes companies and people to stay on a property longer than other real estate markets as they have lower taxes. It also dissuades towns from building housing as long term the costs such as schools, services, etc. go up with market, but not tax revenues.
The availability and cost of housing in California and Santa Cruz is a real problem for many people. I've seen a lot of finger pointing with people's favorite scapegoats. I'd like to see the same energy go into the difficult work of city planning for construction, transportation, schools, etc.
- UC Santa Cruz has increased enrollment to 19,500 students with only just around half of them living on campus. Living on campus is relatively expensive at $1940 for room & board to share a room [1,2]
- Considering Santa Cruz itself has just around 65,000 residents the half of students living off campus make up 15% of population
- Certainly people commute over to tech for higher pay, but according to HUD that number has climbed just 4% from 26-30% between 2005 to 2015 [3]
- Santa Cruz itself greatly limits development with annual permits averaging around 250 for the past 10 years and almost all single family homes and townhomes rather than higher density [4]
- California's entire real estate market has been warped by Prop 13 which fixes real estate taxes to the time property was purchased with limited increases [5]. This incentivizes companies and people to stay on a property longer than other real estate markets as they have lower taxes. It also dissuades towns from building housing as long term the costs such as schools, services, etc. go up with market, but not tax revenues.
The availability and cost of housing in California and Santa Cruz is a real problem for many people. I've seen a lot of finger pointing with people's favorite scapegoats. I'd like to see the same energy go into the difficult work of city planning for construction, transportation, schools, etc.
[1] https://admissions.ucsc.edu/why-ucsc/faq/housing.html
[2] https://housing.ucsc.edu/rates/index.html
[3] https://www.huduser.gov/portal/publications /pdf/SantaCruzCA-CHMA-19.pdf (page 7)
[4] https://www.huduser.gov/portal/publications /pdf/SantaCruzCA-CHMA-19.pdf (page 14)
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13
[edited for formatting]