No Place Like Home: Affordable Housing in Crisis, Santa Cruz County, CA
August 2021: Miriam Greenberg, Steve McKay, James Sirigotis, w/ Thao Le
Executive Summary
Santa Cruz County—located on the Central Coast of California and well known for its beaches, university, and alternative, laid-back culture—has recently become renowned for another feature: It is one of the least affordable metropolitan areas in the United States and globally to live. Sixty percent of the City of Santa Cruz residents, and 40 percent of Santa Cruz County residents, are renters, with the median rent pushing past $3,000 per month. Santa Cruz is also the metro area with the highest rate of homelessness in the nation. Santa Cruz’s housing crisis has many facets—extreme rent burdens, precarious living situations, widespread displacement, and homelessness—with enormous impacts on the community and region.
The No Place Like Home (NPLH) report is the culmination of a three-year mixed-method, multimedia research project, conducted by faculty and students at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and their communitybased partners, with the goal of understanding the affordable housing crisis and its lessons for the region and beyond. Between 2016 and 2018, the research team surveyed tenants, interviewed a range of stakeholders, gathered photographic evidence of housing conditions, and researched historical trends and policy options. This report synthesizes the research in three main areas: the roots of the crisis, its ramifications for different populations and geographies, and potentially impactful political and policy responses.
Our findings include the following on the roots of the crisis:
- The federal and state withdrawal of support for “social,” publicly subsidized housing, alongside privatization and financialization of housing markets, has resulted in a steep decline in affordable housing production and an increasing class divide between homeowners and renters.
- The blocking and outright dismantling of tenant protections statewide and nationally have accelerated since the 1980s, fueled by coalitions of real estate industry actors and local homeowners. Failure to pass rent control and eviction protections in Santa Cruz are exemplary in this regard.
- Imposition of exclusionary zoning since the 1970s, fueled by local anti-growth politics in Santa Cruz and
throughout California, helped prevent provision of more affordable multifamily housing. This disparately
impacted low-income, nonwhite renters, exacerbating spatial segregation along lines of race and class. - Housing demand skyrocketed in the last decade as millions became renters after the recession and foreclosure crisis of 2008. Distinct pressures intensify this demand locally: the movement of Silicon Valley workers and industry to the coast, the conversion of residential property to vacation rentals, and the University of California’s mandate to increase student enrollments without providing added funds for housing, or attention to cost of living, for its local campuses.
These findings suggest a new housing justice movement is greatly needed. This movement, which is growing regionally and nationally, will need to forge coalitions across all forms of housing tenure, including homeowners, renters, and the unhoused, and address the multiple roots and ramifications of the current crisis.
Ramifications: Our Survey Findings
- The NPLH renter survey collected 1,737 responses and 80 follow-up interviews from across Santa Cruz County. We focused on areas of renter concentration: the Westside, Beach Flats/Lower Ocean, and Downtown in the City of Santa Cruz; the unincorporated area of Live Oak; and the City of Watsonville/Freedom.
- Our sample reflected the demographics and geographic concentration of the renter population: half identified as Latinx, varying from 20 percent on the Westside to 89 percent in Watsonville/Freedom. Overall, 35 percent lived with children, ranging from 60 percent in immigrant-rich Watsonville/Freedom to 14 percent in the student renter-dominated Westside.
Based on responses to the 150-question NPLH survey, four key issues emerged:
Rent Burden. We found astonishing degrees of burden caused by skyrocketing rents:
- 70 percent of respondents were rent burdened, spending at least a third of their income on rent and utilities; half were “extremely rent burdened,” spending more than 50 percent of their income on these costs.
- One in four renters (26 percent) face what we call “obscene rent burden”: spending 70 percent or more of income on rent/utilities—a level not captured in official government categories.ed Westside.
- Rent burden was uniformly high across geographic areas and across ethnic groups, but poor renters faced disproportionally high rent burdens.
- Being rent burdened had significant consequences for residents, forcing them to forgo essential items like food and medicine, not pay other bills, borrow money, take on additional jobs, or pawn or sell possessions.
Overcrowding. Crowding more people into units beyond official capacity was one of the primary responses
to the crisis of high rents. Of the tenants surveyed, we found:
- A quarter, or 27 percent, lived in overcrowded housing, about three times the official rate.
- Overcrowding is also strongly correlated with race and neighborhood: 40 percent of Watsonville/Freedom respondents lived in overcrowded conditions, and while only 12 percent of whites faced overcrowding, 39 percent of Latinx renters did.
Forced Moves. In a hot, unregulated housing market, renters can be forced to move for many reasons, from formal evictions to rapid rent increases. We found:
- Fully half of those who had moved in the last five years said a move was not voluntary, meaning every third person we surveyed experienced a forced move.
- No neighborhood or group proved immune to dislocation, but Latinx renters and multigenerational households suffered higher rates of forced moves.
Major Problems with Housing.
- Over half of renters (57 percent) identified at least one of myriad problems with their housing, including frequent problems with the condition of their unit, landlord or manager unresponsiveness, excessive noise, and poor building security.
- More than half of tenants did not report their problems to any official authorities, either because problems like massive rent increases were not illegal, or out of fear of eviction or conflict with their landlord.