Talk and real action are on the rise in dealing with Sonoma County’s affordable housing crisis, but some of the talk is about the county’s poorest families and how many Latinos might get left behind as local governments, nonprofits and the construction industry work to build 30,000 houses in the next five years.
The ranks of people struggling with the county’s extreme housing costs are filled with farmworkers, hospitality helpers, retail clerks and laborers making less than $15 an hour and paying almost half their wages on shelter, according to statistics presented last week at a business and community luncheon sponsored by the Latino leadership group, Los Cien.
Other talk pointed to the housing crisis as being as much about stagnant wages as it is a “supply and demand” issue about building more housing stock.
The county’s median wage is $64,000 where it would take a salary of $170,000 to make today’s median housing price of $600,000 qualify as “affordable.”
Besides farmworkers, those numbers mean teachers and other professionals also cannot afford today’s housing prices.
Patrick Kallerman, of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute, told the Los Cien audience that 40 percent of the county’s population cannot afford to rent or buy a house here.
“It’s much worse in the Latino population,” he added. “And as we continue to under-build, it will only get worse.”
A panel of housing experts did find a few bright spots in the community and local government response to the housing crisis, exasperated by the 2017 wildfires that destroyed 5,300 homes. Local governments have reduced some permit fees, relaxed rules to allow second units and launched housing funds in partnership with nonprofits like Burbank Housing and the private building industry, the panelists pointed out.
Still, Sonoma County housing costs have increased by 58 percent since 2011 and rents have increased by 32 percent where there is also a very low vacancy rate in the current market.
“This has been a 30- to 40-year growing problem,” Efren Carrillo, of the nonprofit Burbank Housing, said. “The wage imbalance means families, many being Latinos, are lacking money for more than just housing. It’s not just not having enough; it’s never having anything left over.”
“We agreed decades ago to build 30,000 homes,” said Peter Rumble, executive director of the Santa Rosa Metro Chamber of Commerce. “Since then, we’ve put a man on the moon and much more. This isn’t the Eisenhower Administration anymore.”
Rumble advocated for more talk where pro-housing people show up at government hearings to support projects that are often opposed by a vocal minority.
“We’ve done well. We have our rules to prevent sprawl, but we haven’t been building where we said we should,” Rumble said.
Panelist moderator Karin Demarest, of the Sonoma County Community Foundation said, “the homes we are missing are the homes of our children, grandchildren and friends. Our local governments are doing some good work and they need our support.”
Lack of affordable housing and skyrocketing rents is a heightened issue in the county’s Latino communities because of lower incomes and previous cultural barriers to education and other opportunities.
Los Cien leader Herman Hernandez said after the forum, “I didn’t hear satisfactory discussions about what ‘housing equity’ means. I don’t think there is wide enough understanding about what else that includes and the cultural history that got us here.”
Lisa Carreno, of the Los Cien board and executive director for United Way of the Wine Country introduced the housing program topic and panel last week.
“It’s complicated,” she said, adding that the recent floods that destroyed 1,600 homes makes the problem even more complicated.
“Did I say it was complicated?” she asked.
