Protesting the cult of Sonoma Valley opulent wealth
The Sonoma Index-Tribune, Valley of the Moon and Sonoma magazines, and real estate agents on Facebook are constantly throwing out images of luxury housing sales and people eating $100 lunches. This is insensitive, unseemly, and unsustainable. Local city and county governments stoke this upper-crust lifestyle trend with all manner of high-end tourism-hospitality-wine country boosting.
It is government-backed economic policy that is creating a bifurcated society here which government then claims it can’t address because government doesn’t control the market… even as government games the market to fill its coffers and to serve its constituents.
What we are seeing in Sonoma Valley, as a fractal of the wine country economy, is a system where business interests, property owners, the wealthy, and government functionaries all benefit from a Faustian Bargain with predatory capitalism while lower-income workers’ pay the bulk of the costs. The upper end sees assets rise, can cash in, sell out, what have you, while the servants scrape for crumbs.
At the very least this wine-tasting luxury lifestyle Faustian Bargain needs to have a sustainable payday for the servants. If not, time to create more unions and go in strike.
Ø 40% of all renters in Sonoma County are suffering from severe cost burden
Ø The County has @ 40% renters
Ø 22% of all tenants paying more than 50% of their monthly income toward rent
Ø “Nine of every 10 extremely low- and very low-income renters are severely rent burdened”
Ø Median rent is on a constant upward trajectory while average income falls and stagnates
Ø Near 50% of RHNA* is for Very Low and Low-income housing but production is about all market rate
Ø “37.5% of Black households own their own homes, and 43% of Latino households, compared to 70% percent of white households. Also, 63% of Black renters and 56% of Latino renters are rent-burdened.”
Ø Luxury and median-cost home ownership is unattainable a third or more of the people
Ø 29% of people in the 1st District are older than 65
Ø 9.2% of people in the 1st District live in poverty
Ø Average 1st District commute time is 30 minutes, and 67% drive alone
“Essential workers” are a big slice of the people suffering from severe housing cost burdens. These are immigrants in low-wage jobs. These are the people who keep the economy running. Immigrants keep our community vital and provide necessary services to our aging population. This while low density, single family zoning-protecting cohorts fight to exclude immigrants into a more inclusive city and preserve their interests in the past. We as a community should be looking forward and adapting by welcoming immigrants, annexing the Springs and giving everyone a seat at the table. Extreme high costs are displacing young families and destroying the ability of workforce to live here.
What kind of economy and monetary policy requires exploitation to be successful? Surely we can do better, or else all the talk about sustainability will have to be seen as pure BS. No chain can be strong and sustainable if the weakest links are routinely ignored.
References
Press Democrat article on Generation Housing symposium
1st District 2020, 2022 Census data
https://data.census.gov/profile/Sonoma_CCD,_Sonoma_County,_California?g=060XX00US0609793070
Gen H “Making the Rent” report
https://generationhousing.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/HCB-SoCo-2023_ExecSummary.pdf
Immigrants in Maine are filling a labor gap. It may be a prelude for the US
*RHNA
Regional Housing Needs Assessment, this is part of California state Housing Element law. Each jurisdiction has to show it has the space to account for projected housing needs. SoCo RHNA was near 4000 for the eight-year 6th cycle Housing Element (2023-2031), a very large increase from the 5th cycle.
Sonoma County slow- and no-growth backers (formerly known as NIMBYs) have objected heavily to this higher RHNA allocation. Their data sources come from Palo Alto’s Embarcadero Institute; the NIMBY think tank. In contrast, more progressive takes come from data sources like US Berkeley Terner Center and the Othering and Belonging Institute that back the new RHNA numbers.
In SoCo and Sonoma Valley there is no trouble to build market rate housing, or to stoke higher and higher strip and flip luxury resale values. The market has thus tipped all units, even mobile homes, to higher and higher end meaning that the only way to get new affordable housing numbers to match the need noted above is to produce it, hence the larger RHNA where 2000 6th cycle units are for Very Low and Low-income units.
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