Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Santa Cruz is a Housing Nightmare

darrellowens.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 134 posts

Re: Santa Cruz is a Housing Nightmare

#41

Post by michaelwww »

seahorserocker wrote: post #36
michaelwww wrote: post #16

Santa Cruz native here: I can understand the author's frustrations coming to Santa Cruz from the outside but there's more to it. He's describing a UCSC problem because the university is expanding without building enough dormitories and relying on development in the city instead. This is causing unrest among the natives who resent 5 story huge San Jose style apartment blocks going up in their beautiful city. The secon…

Excellent article. Here we have it ^, the opposition to housing solutions. Not pitchfork wielding homeowners, but polite good citizens who are NIMBY and disguised as environmentally friendly people who really care for the city's character, as well as blaming the UC. Please tell me how the massive meth-filled homeless encampment behind the courthouse is being handled in a "progressive" way. By the way they were forcib…

Call it what you want, but the goal was to keep Santa Cruz from turning into Waikiki, Hawaii with high rise apartment buildings lining the ocean. We fought to keep Lighthouse Field from being developed. I think it was worth it even if I can't afford to live there. I'm leaving behind a city that is as nice as when I grew up there, except now there are far too many surfers to make going out enjoyable.

Re: Santa Cruz is a Housing Nightmare

#42

Post by foogazi »

When does growth stop ? What’s the end-game ?

As a techie, Santa Cruz renter and UCSC parent, I sympathize with the author

But living here and going to school here are choices, UC Davis, Merced & Berkeley exist

I’m sure someone can complain that I outbid them to rent a house

But driving up from Berkeley, seeing the housing issue, the homeless problem, and then saying “this sucks, but make room for me” strikes me as naive

Re: Santa Cruz is a Housing Nightmare

#43

Post by jltsiren »

michaelwww wrote: post #16

Santa Cruz native here: I can understand the author's frustrations coming to Santa Cruz from the outside but there's more to it. He's describing a UCSC problem because the university is expanding without building enough dormitories and relying on development in the city instead. This is causing unrest among the natives who resent 5 story huge San Jose style apartment blocks going up in their beautiful city. The secon…

Not a local, but I've been here for a while.

Santa Cruz was already ridiculously unaffordable before the pandemic. Then the pandemic hit, the students went away, and other people moved in. The CZU Fire destroyed many homes in the mountains. Wealthy people from the Bay Area realized that Santa Cruz could be a nice place to live in if they want to work remotely while having the option to visit the office on short notice. Now the students are back, and there is much less housing available for them than there used to be.

The university shares the blame, but it's at least trying to build new housing. The NIMBYs are simply doing their best to prevent that. There is a wide coalition consisting of students, alumni, locals, landlords, and so on that opposes building anything new on university lands.

I came here to work at UCSC, but I've pretty much given up on the city and the university. Santa Cruz is not even particularly nice for its price. It feels more like a missed opportunity than a desirable area.

Re: Santa Cruz is a Housing Nightmare

#44

Post by michaelwww »

seahorserocker wrote: post #37
michaelwww wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Setting up slum cities is now the standard of progressiveness in America The alternative was to continue to let people live in the surrounding forests while shooting up heroin with dirty needles, trashing the woods and causing lengthy service calls for police and ambulance. This way they are all in one spot and are serviced by clean needle program, etc... What's your solution?

... build housing.

They are... several huge apartment blocks downtown that are ugly as sin but necessary. The homeless problem in Santa Cruz is mostly about drugs and mental illness. People who couldn't keep an apartment if you provided them with one.

Re: Santa Cruz is a Housing Nightmare

#45

Post by joe_the_user »

michaelwww wrote: post #16

Santa Cruz native here: I can understand the author's frustrations coming to Santa Cruz from the outside but there's more to it. He's describing a UCSC problem because the university is expanding without building enough dormitories and relying on development in the city instead. This is causing unrest among the natives who resent 5 story huge San Jose style apartment blocks going up in their beautiful city. The secon…

Homeless is a problem but Santa Cruz tries to handle it a progressive way, for example, by setting up the homeless camp next to the courthouse and providing it with services

Claims of "progressive approaches" are simply bogus here. Santa Cruz' response has been typical for any and every city with a homeless problem. Santa Cruz has never established a well-ordered, permanent tent city. Like just about everywhere with a huge homeless problem, they tolerate homeless camps for bit and then tear them down, destroy people possessions and move them on 'till a new camp appears. [1]

Just as much, Santa Cruz closed all institutional free food distribution locations at the start of Covid (Saint Francis Soup Kitchen may or may not have reopen but if it has, it is all). This left the anarchist group Food Not Bomb as the only source of food for homeless and Food Not Bombs has been repeatedly criminalized by the city of Santa Cruz. [2]

In the context of what cities provide, one has to keep in mind a broad court decision that essentially cities can't evict people from public areas without providing them some sort of housing - which has meant that every city has formally given housing to the homeless in terms of shelters and camps but every city makes that housing as miserable as possible since they really want to push the home out since every city thinks of this as a "local problem".

[1] https://www.santacruzsentinel.com/2022/09/08/first-zone-of-s...

[2] https://www.cityofsantacruz.com/home/showpublisheddocument/8...

Re: Santa Cruz is a Housing Nightmare

#46

Post by s3r3nity »

seahorserocker wrote: post #36
michaelwww wrote: post #16

Santa Cruz native here: I can understand the author's frustrations coming to Santa Cruz from the outside but there's more to it. He's describing a UCSC problem because the university is expanding without building enough dormitories and relying on development in the city instead. This is causing unrest among the natives who resent 5 story huge San Jose style apartment blocks going up in their beautiful city. The secon…

Excellent article. Here we have it ^, the opposition to housing solutions. Not pitchfork wielding homeowners, but polite good citizens who are NIMBY and disguised as environmentally friendly people who really care for the city's character, as well as blaming the UC. Please tell me how the massive meth-filled homeless encampment behind the courthouse is being handled in a "progressive" way. By the way they were forcib…

> Increased density is coming to everywhere in California, like it or not.

If you're hoping to have a well intentioned, successful argument with NIMBY folks, this is _not_ the way to do so.

People who own the land & houses in an area are saying they do not want this. No matter how much you say "but I _really_ want it, and it's going to happen" is not going to change that.

And they've been winning for _decades_....hoping for yet another election to somehow change that is not a winning strategy.

There are thousands of other colleges in the US - if you make the choice to go to a school that did not have the foresight nor ability to house the students they let in, that is not the problem of the Santa Cruz property owners and tax payers.

Disclosure: I'm not taking sides on this, because I don't live in California (anymore) and bought in a pro-growth city...largely because I evaluated my options and made the choice to live in that type of environment that was more welcoming.

Re: Santa Cruz is a Housing Nightmare

#47

Post by fosk »

seahorserocker wrote: post #37
michaelwww wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Setting up slum cities is now the standard of progressiveness in America The alternative was to continue to let people live in the surrounding forests while shooting up heroin with dirty needles, trashing the woods and causing lengthy service calls for police and ambulance. This way they are all in one spot and are serviced by clean needle program, etc... What's your solution?

... build housing.

Okay great, let’s build housing for addicts. What do you think happens next?

We are talking about people that get kicked out of shelters because they are dangerous and can’t act coherently.

Why is the solution everything else but the obvious: arrest drug dealers, outlaw drug use in open air drug scenes, offer real recovery and/or jail time for those that refuse.

These people are here for drugs: outlaw drugs (for real) and they will leave, and just like that, no more housing crisis.

Does this look like a housing problem to you? https://twitter.com/ericajsandberg/status/157377720286841651...

Re: Santa Cruz is a Housing Nightmare

#48

Post by uup »

paxys wrote: post #32
uup wrote: post #26

There really is a lot of truth in Mark Twain's old adage: "Buy land, they're not making it anymore." I think there is a certain amount of delusion in expecting any static resource to meet monotonically increasing amounts of demand.

It will be a very, very long time before we run out of usable land in this country. The problem really is that 50% of the population wants to live on the same 0.1% of land.

The saying can apply to any arbitrary area of land. It doesn't necessarily mean the entire Earth.

Re: Santa Cruz is a Housing Nightmare

#49

Post by millimeterman »

foogazi wrote: post #42

When does growth stop ? What’s the end-game ? As a techie, Santa Cruz renter and UCSC parent, I sympathize with the author But living here and going to school here are choices, UC Davis, Merced & Berkeley exist I’m sure someone can complain that I outbid them to rent a house But driving up from Berkeley, seeing the housing issue, the homeless problem, and then saying “this sucks, but make room for me” strikes me as n…

> When does growth stop ? What’s the end-game ?

Why should the growth stop? People are clearly demonstrating a desire to move to these cities. I see no reason why NIMBYs should be allowed to artificially decide that newcomers are not allowed. Growth will simply continue as long as people keep moving in.

Re: Santa Cruz is a Housing Nightmare

#50

Post by aclatuts »

boringg wrote: post #8
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Santa Cruz is a tiny dot of land between the mountains and ocean Which is probably why so many people want to live there in the first place. Just like Vancouver or other such vibrant cities with great nature, pretty views and many amenities.

Santa Cruz is small. Vancouver is a large with significant land. Very different except they are both on the west coast.

A 4Ghz CPU is faster than a 1Ghz CPU. If you wanted to scale the best you would want faster algorithms and faster hardware. Not just faster hardware.

Not being able to do something because of size for a human behaviour problem is almost always the smooth brain argument.

Post reply on HN