16 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY SEPTEMBER 26-OCTOBER 2, 2024 www.montereycountynow.com Tally Mark Cities can’t manage what they can’t measure, which is why rental registries are important. By Gabriel Sanders FORUM The Gender Equity Policy Institute released a report in June stating that compared to 1970, nearly four times as many California renters are spending more than half their income on housing. Decades’ worth of data went into their figures, with the most recent coming from the 2022 American Community Survey (ACS) conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. The State of California has mandated housing production to address the disparity between wages and housing costs. Legislators have crafted laws to reduce the time, cost, and risk of housing development, and require local jurisdictions to reciprocate. While the state approach relies on imperfect data, even better local data collection can show lawmakers which policies work, which do not, and how to adjust. Monterey’s 2023-2031 Housing Element is the state-mandated policy plan to guide housing and community development policy for the next seven years. The Housing Element uses 2020 ACS findings to inform its community profile: 43.8 percent of Monterey residents are housing cost-burdened, meaning they pay more than 30 percent of their gross income for housing; 22.7 percent paid more than 30 percent of their household income for housing, while another 21.1 percent spent more than half their income. The community profile also states that 65.74 percent of households—9,100 of the city’s 13,825 residential units—are renter-occupied. A data problem becomes evident in a manual count of the ACS data for rental pricing: the 2020 survey only covered 3,474 renting households, and the 2022 ACS covered 3,624. This means just over one-third of rental units were surveyed, which in turn means the Housing Element relies on incomplete data. The Housing Element resorts to Zillow as a source for home price fluctuations, displaying a chart that shows home values growing from around $600,000 in 2011 to just under $1.2 million in 2022. Zillow also has recent rental data: As of Sept. 7, median rent for a one-bedroom home in Monterey is $2,100/ month, $2,995 for a two-bedroom. These data, however, account only for rentals listed on Zillow. Clearly, local jurisdictions could do better when it comes to the data informing policy decisions. This is the stated purpose of the rental registries recently enacted in Monterey and Salinas. Monterey’s ordinance is more comprehensive, requiring reporting of current rents from landlords with more than three units, and making specific property information publicly accessible. By contrast, Salinas does not require rental price data and does not disaggregate specific property information in public disclosures. The transparency of Monterey’s registry could provide insights into the rental market, benefiting both tenants concerned with affordability, along with landlords concerned about fairness. It is a tool for elected officials to make data-informed policy decisions. Gabriel Sanders is executive director of the Opportunity Housing Trust, a community land trust for preservation and development of affordable housing across Monterey County. OPINION The Housing Element relies on incomplete data.
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