A constant topic hereabouts is Affordable Housing. Specifically: When will we ever get affordable housing? Congress recently passed the “21st Century Road To Housing Act,” but no one should give up their spot under the Ig Vella Bridge just yet.
For starters, “affordable housing” is complicated. The City of Sonoma explains it at https://www.sonomacity.org/affordable-housing-program/. For the rest of the Valley, a good starting point is https://sonomacounty.gov/incomelimits. It requires at least a “B+” in algebra to determine how many family members and how much income qualifies for what housing, where, under what circumstances and in what weather.
With Political Season here, candidates for every office, from governor to school-crossing guard, will likely promise to flush the regulatory sewers and unleash a torrent of Affordable Housing.
Sure.
The Housing Market is complicated – by overlapping and/or inter-related federal, state and local environmental, zoning and building regulations; fluctuating mortgage rates; land, material and labor costs; builder profits; water shortages; nimbys; preserving open spaces; and a “Who cares?” attitude of the comfortably housed, sitting in living rooms ‘only steps from the Plaza.’ At best, the 21st Century Road To Housing Act might make housing regulations more . . . legible?
A local Certified Cynic has concluded, “Everyone now living here can obviously afford to live here. Problem solved.”
Those with the least influence over new housing in the Valley are folks living elsewhere who might want to live here. Exhibit A: After years of talk-talk, not even unaffordable housing has been built at the long-vacant, overgrown, rotting Sonoma Developmental Center.
But who really needs affordable housing? What is the demand and from whence doth it come? Fortunately, local Elders afternooning in an up-Valley salon/oon set their minds to these questions, their conversation secretly recorded by sommeliers.
Their thinking: People who need affordable housing here in the Valley are (a) those who drive long distances to work here from other places where they can barely afford to live; (b) Valley renters whose landlord just jacked the rent up to ‘you’ve-GOT-to-be-sh*tting-me!;’ (c) newlyweds living in their parents’ basement, longing for their own place; (d) local employers having trouble hiring new workers because those workers can’t afford to live here on what those employers would pay them; and (e) the un-housed sleeping in public places and upsetting the tourists.
People not needing affordable housing in the Valley: Anyone with enough cash to buy or rent here. Complicating the affordable housing discussion: (a) Valley homeowners who want their homes to double/triple/quadruple in value so they’ll make a fortune when it sells; (b) realtors, who make bigger commi$$ion$ on unaffordable home sales.
What’s more, local homeowners don’t want ‘affordable-looking’ houses nearby that might ‘ruin the neighborhood.’ Affordable housing built too close to multi-million-dollar homes might even be . . . uninsurable. If youse know what I’m talkin’ here.
As the afternoon wined/wound down, the Elders announced a solution: The Federal Government should give – not loan – Americans money to help them buy houses. Cash, cryptos, bitcoins, gigabites, BMWs, NFTs, whatever TF works.
Their reasoning? American taxpayers now pay twenty to twenty-five billion dollars per year to house U.S. troops at 750 installations overseas, to protect foreigners and their houses. Why not a few billion to house Americans right here at home; hard-working Americans who pay the taxes that provide the money to house the troops who . . .
“No, no, wait. Wait!” said one. “That . . . That would be (father/son/holy spirit) Socialism!”
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