Calling all better angels
The post-fire recovery landscape is moving quickly in many ways, and concerned parties look on with both hope and trepidation.
We are in a post disaster crisis, imbued with good will, yet actor’s underlying issues and interests can reasonably be expected to stay the same. Actors involved in recovery can thus part-ways been seen through a lens of wanting to be good guys and help out now, and also through the record of their past ideology, motivations and actions.
A new Darius Anderson-founded group, Rebuild North Bay is fresh on the scene, and a cause of concern and consternation for people in the social justice and environmental sustainability communities. Here are controversial characters like Anderson, Doug Bosco, and Richard Idell, as RNB directors. Are they really good guys? Has their constituency changed to include the whole community now? Are we really “all in this together?” Will non-profit builders be included in their plans? Are Area Median Income (AMI) renter’s needs on their radar?
At a time of crisis, the tendency is to give the benefit of the doubt, but folks are naturally wondering about this RNB group…. After-disaster recovery plans: Katrina, Puerto Rico, are rife with stories of situations taken advantage of by insider power players. Hopefully the RNB executive committee will include some members recognized to have stature with social justice and environmental sustainability communities.
Basically, in Sonoma County, we have the exact same divided socio-economic landscape as before, only now all are called to come together as one community to address a large-scale problem. How will a community who up to now has had unaddressed socio-economic equity issues and tensions finesse those differences and come together to create a common view of the future? Is this possible? Can a reset button somehow get pushed so that everyone’s vision of the future gets put on the table? Who will control the table where such views may sit and be heard?
My personal main interest is affordable housing and the cohort of county residents who make the Area Median Income (AMI). In a county and city noted as among the top most unaffordable places to live in the USA, whose pricey-ness has been aided and abetted by a regional luxury tourism lobby, that heretofore has not accepted responsibility for their part in systemic unaffordability and unsustainability, the AMI cohort has gotten the short end of the stick by far. Far from being made whole by such pre-fire ubiquitous wealth, The AMI population has been torn apart at the seams for a solid ten years now.
My goal here is not to open up conflict, but to ask valid questions about long-term housing goals and interests, and to speak up when the time is ripe to advocate for AMI interests.
Now there is an immediate fire-related need to rebuild housing. Making people “whole” is a term that has been used as a goal in recovery. At some point, stats will come out as to how many renters were affected by the fires. Renters deserve to be made whole just as do property owners. Renters are stakeholders, residents and citizens here as well. Being made whole for renters means that they have an affordable opportunity to live in Sonoma County and to continue to be part of their communities. There are also likely homeowners whose insurance will not cover rebuilding. These people will need to live somewhere, and likely will need rentals.
For renters in Sonoma County, there is both an acute and a chronic housing crisis. At both levels, the high cost issues can only reasonably be met through housing built by non-profit developers. In order to make all current and future renting fire victims whole, and to address chronic, systemic housing inequities, AMI-affordable housing needs to be part of current building solutions.
In our current political climate, the poor, i.e. Sonoma County renters, are under widespread assault from the Trump administration. This is manifested by threatened and actual loss of health care coverage, loss of institutional and banking support for affordable housing, loss of environmental, union, and workplace protections, and deportation. Now more than ever, county AMI-level renters need help from the great wealth and philanthropy present in the Bay Area, and to be supported by the liberal values that are said to predominate here.
This need has already been underlined by the Sonoma Valley Fund, with its Hidden in Plain Sight study. A critical finding: housing issues are a top need basically unaddressed by philanthropy. Now, with philanthropy seeming to be coming out everywhere, and with high-level fund raisers chipping in, and government hopefully willing to take bold measures, what the AMI community needs is a strong, top-level advocate to step up and rally the forces for the great acute and chronic housing needs at hand. This is a moment to seize, for the good will and urgency present, and for the resources available.
It’s hard to believe that free market, market rate, and profit-oriented people alone, like the RNB core group, will be able to properly frame renter’s issues and assign the importance needed for the AMI population. Who will be the AMI champion here? Who with moral authority, power and influence can speak for the acute and chronically unwhole renters? Whoever you are, please step up soon!
Renters have up to now experienced personal tragedies that occur in isolation, one at a time, without great fanfare, and without the eliciting of great compassion from the community. Many see the poor as deserving what they get, and not as victims of structural discrimination and exploitation. The poor can receive crumbs and charity, but not government support, or equitable redistribution of wealth. Let’s change this tune in the liberal North Bay Area, and take this moment to begin to create a just and sustainable society.
Suggestions:
- Non-profit developers partnered with to Increase the inclusionary requirement to 35%
- Where applicable, use funds raised to build non-profit AMI-level housing
- Costs can be reduced for larger AMI-focused projects; $20 million now for every 50 units
- Donate county public and trust lands on the immediate urban periphery for AMI housing
- Support SDC housing plan that includes 35% AMI affordable housing
- Waive fees for non-profit housing developers
- Support higher density housing along transportation corridors
- No housing built that waives or minimizes climate-protective energy-use specs
In this crisis situation, many people have become the victims of a chance event that has created great material need. This is tragic and the losses touch everyone’s core of compassion. These people all deserve help, and in the short term, the community has really responded. For our long-term community crisis of unaffordable housing, good and services, I believe an equally strong response deserves to happen as well. Now is a chance to release our better angels to support long term housing problems as well. Now that housing has come up as a critical issue again, it’s a good time to speak up and makes asks for where the need is greatest.
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