www.montereycountyweekly.com july 27-august 2, 2023 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY 17 Where we live affects how we live. It’s not a new idea that housing underpins so many other dimensions of our existence—whether we have privacy, the ability to get a good night’s sleep or somewhere quiet to do homework have an impact on our health and wellness and opportunity to succeed academically. These realities were the central topic of a convening on Friday, July 21 of the Salinas Inclusive Economic Development Initiative, a grant-funded effort that for two years is training nonprofit leaders in ideas about how to advance economic opportunity. Participants were invited to share personal stories of housing. At my table, people shared stories in Spanish; each was unique, but each relayed hardship. Maricela Acevedo with the group Mujeres en Acción had been living in the same apartment for eight years when it was sold, and her family of six had to move in two months. She works part time for the VIDA community health worker initiative and her husband is a farmworker; they scrambled. “We applied and applied,” she said. They wanted a house for $3,200/ month, but first and last month’s rent plus a deposit was close to $10,000. “$10,000—where are we going to find that?” Acevedo asked. They considered moving to Paso Robles. (The new owners ended up letting them stay at their place in King City. “God helped us,” she says.) Jackie Cruz, executive director of the Hartnell Foundation, remembered back to being a young mom, living with her baby in a garage for $500/ month. Then the landlord’s sister needed a place to live, bumping her. She bounced around to four apartments before landing in a long-term place through the Housing Authority of the County of Monterey. Today, she is a homeowner. “I hear the stories of these young women, and I wish that by this time, we had advanced more,” Cruz said. These are just a handful of the personal stories past and present that reveal how precarious the housing situation is for so many. The data, as presented by Chris Benner, director of the Institute of Social Transformation at UC Santa Cruz, is a composite of these types of stories. And it is overwhelming. Benner presented on the economics of housing. The tri-county area—Monterey, Santa Cruz and San Benito counties—leads the state in exclusionary zoning, with just 0.03 percent of all land available for multi-family housing. (Compare that to 2.7 percent for the San Francisco Bay area, and 11.8 percent for Los Angeles and 19.9 percent for Sacramento.) The fair-market rental rate for a two-bedroom home in Monterey County is $2,675/month—to afford that realistically (spending no more than 30 percent of income on housing), a household would need an annual income of $107,000. The group I joined last Friday was interested in brainstorming solutions. But even effective solutions can be slippery things. As staff writer Pam Marino reports on p. 14, there is a question before Marina City Council about how to address rent disparities at Preston Park and Abrams Park, a rare local example of city-owned public housing. In a discussion on July 18, Councilmember Cristina Medina Dirksen raised the specter of selling the developments. “I’m taking a little bit of issue being in this particular business, and perhaps we don’t need to be,” she said. She wanted to examine whether the city would make more in property taxes if they sold to a private owner. “Are we under any obligation to provide housing for our residents?” My answer is yes, absolutely. Besides, as Marino reports, it’s been a net gain in revenue to the city. Beyond dollars, solving the housing crisis should appeal to all of us. You can also read about traffic on Highway 68 at rush hour on p. 12. One way to mitigate it is transportation engineering; another is for people to live near their work. According to Benner, 10 percent of tri-county residents travel an hour or more for work. They include Pastor Artis Smith of the New Hope Missionary Baptist Church in Salinas, who has been commuting back and forth from Los Banos for 18 years. “I am making good money and my wife is making good money,” he said. “But we couldn’t afford to stay in the community in which we serve.” It is in all of our interest to find solutions so people like him can live here. Sara Rubin is the Weekly’s editor. Reach her at sara@mcweekly.com. Home Team The housing crisis has implications that go well beyond housing. By Sara Rubin Scoop and Score…One thing about a goose, Squid has observed over the years, is that it pushes a lot out of its caboose. And for those who visit the otherwise handsome lawns at Seaside City Hall or, just across the street at Laguna Grande Park, and see the brown pellets on the ground and think: It’s great to see the city proactively aerating its park lawns to promote better lawn health! Nope! You’re looking at goose poop. It’s an issue Seaside’s been dealing with for decades, but there’s only so much the city can do— wild animals are, you know, wild, and Laguna Grande is home to many geese. So for years the city has had a “turf sweeper” to clean the two lawns before city-sponsored events take place, because no one wants to lay their blanket down on a bunch of dookie, much less worry about their dog eating it. Which is why on July 20, Seaside City Council approved spending $51,500 to purchase a new turf sweeper, as the city’s current one dates back to 1985. Per the official city report regarding the acquisition, its express purpose is “so that maintenance staff can clean up goose poop from the lawns.” It seems like a perfectly reasonable request, and Squid appreciates that Seaside staff didn’t beat around the bush for a bunch of polite euphemisms, and just called it like it is: poop. From a goose. Riding Shotgun…As a proud cephalopod, Squid holds kraken in high esteem. Mythological or not, the thought of a powerful kraken taking down entire ships makes Squid feel all warm and inky. So when Squid learned that a kraken plays a key role in Treasure Hunt: The Ride, Squid made the short ooze over to Cannery Row for the grand opening. Once the ride began, however, Squid was dismayed to see people blazing away at a video kraken. The new attraction is a theme park ride, a shooting gallery, a tall tale and a bit of family fun in one package. In fact, Squid’s colleagues received a press release proclaiming Treasure Hunt “the coolest attraction the area has ever seen.” A stretch? Well, before the arrival of Oscar’s Playground and Escape Room, the coolest things on Cannery Row for families were…Squid is drawing a blank. (Squid sees plenty of jellyfish, so the Monterey Bay Aquarium is of little interest—although Squid deeply appreciates the Aquarium’s work to preserve Squid’s natural habitat. Not to mention, of course, the attraction of Squid’s natural habitat, the Monterey Bay itself.) Once the ride begins, guests go off in pursuit of untold riches, there are arcade guns with unlimited magazine capacity, a tally to identify winners from losers and the entire story is a bit of fake news. Squid thinks Treasure Hunt may actually be the perfect ride for our times. the local spin SQUID FRY THE MISSION OF MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY IS TO INSPIRE INDEPENDENT THINKING AND CONSCIOUS ACTION, ETC. “We couldn’t afford to stay in the community.” Send Squid a tip: squid@mcweekly.com
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