It’s official: Sonoma County is now suffering through multiple droughts, all at the same time. Some are related to one another and some are not. Some are being worsened by the coronavirus pandemic and its related economic impacts. One of the droughts we can mostly blame on Mother Nature, but the others are totally on us.
Two years of very low rainfall have brought us to the beginning edge of historically scarce water supplies for our farmers, cities, wildlife habitats and the rest of us. The other two droughts also include historically scarce resources. One is the dearth of affordable housing and the other is the more hidden crisis of unavailable and unaffordable child care.
These droughts present us with overlapping paradoxes. The drought we should fear the most is the one we can least control. We must conserve as much water as we can but we cannot control how much rain will fall from the sky. We can, and must, address our affordable housing drought and child care scarcity with policy reforms and increased public funding. The willpower needed to turn down our water spigots and rally a community-wide conservation mindset will be mandatory if we are to tackle our other two emergencies.
Meteorological droughts are part of the wet and dry weather cycles of California. Most of us already have lived through several multi-year droughts and as recently as 2012-2016. But the droughts are coming more frequently and are more persistent and intense. And, now they are bringing wildfires with them.
At the end of April, official rainfall totals here were just 38% of normal. Lake Mendocino was at 35% capacity and Lake Sonoma was at 61%. It is very likely we all will be mandated to reduce our water usage by 50% before the summer is over. We fear for our farmers, especially our dairy, livestock and crop producers. The inconvenience of a brown lawn or a dirty car is nothing compared to forced auctions of livestock or leaving fields fallow and unploughed.
With or without enough rain or water, we do not see any hopeful solutions to our affordable housing crisis. The Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) says Sonoma County must build 17,453 housing units in the next three years just to keep the housing shortage from getting worse. This includes affordable housing targets in Cloverdale (211), Healdsburg (157), Windsor (440) and Sebastopol (120).
The median housing price this week in Sonoma County is $767,000. That price is well beyond the economic reach of 60% of all local families. The average rental price for a two-bedroom apartment today is a staggering $1,937. A couple or family would have to earn $69,732 a year to keep their housing expenses at one-third their total annual income.
 Before the pandemic, working families were paying $14,000 to $17,000 a year for child care services per child. The pandemic has greatly reduced daycare and family center services slots. More than 5,000 child care slots have been lost temporarily or permanently due to COVID-19.
The child care drought could be our most severe drought, with the most widespread impacts to our community. As our economy begins to slowly reopen and regain some of its lost economic activity, we are seeing local employers struggling to find the essential workers they need. Parents can’t work if they don’t have child care. When households that previously had multiple paychecks are forced to have one parent stay home with the children, the monthly rent payment becomes unmanageable. Homelessness increases and the local food pantry lines get longer.
We all should join our farmers and pray for rain and gentler weather. But it will take decisive housing zoning and code reforms and more public funding to lessen our man-made droughts that are forcing workers and families to consider moving elsewhere, often far away.
