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Santa Cruz is a Housing Nightmare

darrellowens.substack.com

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Re: Santa Cruz is a Housing Nightmare

#51

Post by alistairSH »

foogazi wrote: post #25
alistairSH wrote: post #21

Any idea what % of the rental market is students vs UCSC staff vs non-UCSC? It seems like the college shouldn't be allowed to enroll more students than the city has capacity to house. At minimum, it should be building more dorms on campus (I have no idea if that's feasible based on town layout).

UCSC sits on 2,000 acres Unconscionable that they off-load student housing onto the city of Santa Cruz Gavin Newsom should lead by example and guarantee that no UC student will go homeless

Looking at the satellite view in Google Maps, there appears to be massive plots of open space dead center on campus and also to the east?

And the entire campus is far less dense than UVA (for whatever that's worth - another small city campus that's extremely picturesque albeit for different reasons). 60% of UVA students live off-campus, but there doesn't seem to be the same problem with obtaining it. Prices are higher than you'd expect in a non-college town, because it's a captive market.

Re: Santa Cruz is a Housing Nightmare

#52

Post by rcpt »

zeruch wrote: post #29
rcpt wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> very environmentally conscious no-growth city > growth would ruin the city So I take it you'll be doing your part and packing your bags?

Given he stated he was a native, why would he (your pedantry aside)?

For the environment, and to not "ruin the city".

Or is your belief that the city was the exact perfect size when his bloodline moved in and it's only people who showed up later that are undeserving?

Re: Santa Cruz is a Housing Nightmare

#53

Post by Analemma_ »

michaelwww wrote: post #30
millimeterman wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Santa Cruz since the 70's has been a very environmentally conscious no-growth city Dense construction with high-quality public transport is a significantly more environmentally-friendly city design than a sea of single-family homes with mandatory car ownership. The latter may be more superficially "natural" - green swaths of suburbia vs. concrete jungles - but it really is only superficial. > San Jose style growth…

I suspect you don't understand the difference between Santa Cruz and San Jose. Have you been to Santa Cruz?

"You don't understand why we're unique and special and therefore need special housing rules that just so happen to be identical to the ones in every other town" is also a bog-standard NIMBY argument. You're really ticking every single checkbox here.

Re: Santa Cruz is a Housing Nightmare

#54

Post by uup »

millimeterman wrote: post #33
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.

Ever since humanity started being able to build upward, I'm not sure this is so relevant. There's more than enough developed land to comfortably house the human race. We're just using it comically inefficiently.

Let's saying the average human values shelter at $X. Even if it were always possible to arbitrarily build upwards, it still makes sense to buy land because the value of the land would be $X * number of people who want to live on the land. As long as the number of people who want to live on your land keeps growing, as seems to be the case in Santa Cruz, it makes sense to own land.

And of course, once you own the land, you may decide that maybe you don't want so many people around. The value of your land is based on desirability, not the actual density, after all. So instead of building an arbitrarily tall building, you band together with the other land owners and implement something called zoning that restricts how high buildings can be.

I'm not making a moral claim that this is right or wrong. I'm simply pointing out that this incentive structure is inherent to land ownership in our country.

Re: Santa Cruz is a Housing Nightmare

#56

Post by michaelwww »

jwlstn wrote: post #40
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…

Really amazing to try and offer perspective of a "native" with some unique insights about a community only to offer up the same tired NIMBY arguments you hear in every housing-starved city. ANd then to claim that your homeless problem is fine because you put them in a slum tent city with "services" is truly the icing on the cake lol

I guess we could just let the homeless smoke meth and shoot heroin in the Redwood forests like we used to and not do anything

Re: Santa Cruz is a Housing Nightmare

#57

Post by RhysU »

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…

> What’s the end-game?

Step 1: Move somewhere affordable.

Step 2: Spend years building an awesome community because you personally endeavor to make it what you want.

Step 3: Profit.

Notice this is the same process for a fixer upper house. It's just a buying into a fixer upper community. Labor intensive. Higher variability in the outcome but notice much more upside than flipping houses.

Re: Santa Cruz is a Housing Nightmare

#58

Post by yuan43 »

The recipe for what Santa Cruz is experiencing seems to be:

1. Locate the city in a geographically isolated, but beautiful area close to a major employment hub.

2. Institute strong anti-growth policies.

3. Invite a UC into town.

4. Allow the UC to expand without the matching requirement to build one market-rate housing unit per admitted student.

5. Wait a few decades.

What's great about this is how everyone is trying to get something for nothing. The students are trying to get a "UC" brand without the highly-selective entry requirements of other UCs, and largely bringing in loans to pay for it. The university is growing the student population without building sufficient student housing. Property owners benefit from skyrocketing values without experiencing the pain of finding a place to live, or proportionally exploding property taxes. The city benefits from the money the students bring with them in the form of debt.

I suspect this process would go into reverse rather quickly by taking a single step. Cut the federal loans program by 50%, then 10% per year for every year thereafter.

For extra bang, repeal Proposition 13.

Re: Santa Cruz is a Housing Nightmare

#59

Post by slavapestov »

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…

I feel like higher education and housing for students should be a higher priority than turning the city into a museum frozen in time for aging "locals".

Re: Santa Cruz is a Housing Nightmare

#60

Post by newaccount2021 »

foogazi wrote: post #25
alistairSH wrote: post #21

Any idea what % of the rental market is students vs UCSC staff vs non-UCSC? It seems like the college shouldn't be allowed to enroll more students than the city has capacity to house. At minimum, it should be building more dorms on campus (I have no idea if that's feasible based on town layout).

UCSC sits on 2,000 acres Unconscionable that they off-load student housing onto the city of Santa Cruz Gavin Newsom should lead by example and guarantee that no UC student will go homeless

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