AT THE EPICENTER OF EVERYTHING QUITE DELICIOUS

The Big Picture
The Affordable Housing Debacle is about to destroy small- and medium-size, California cities (the large ones have already been destroyed) through a social re-engineering experiment by the state of California to re-distribute incomes across all California cities to balance them more evenly. We are already struggling as a people with the inflationary effects of the US Treasury printing money to fund this massive, national infrastructure project which is a giant leap toward socialized housing in the United States. This insane movement will induce massive migrations into small- and medium-size cities that were assigned disproportionately-high affordable housing allocation numbers like Santa Cruz, Capitola and Monterey, changing their skylines and their character's, forever, and nearly overnight, without any impact considerations factored into the state allocation models (deja vu: flashback to the SERFR jet path). Whether we all lived in the natural surroundings of Santa Cruz or the barren Mojave Desert, our allocation number would have been exactly the same. It's simply: "Do it, or else. And we don't care about the repercussions to your quality of life."

This may be the final stand for property owners as they are already being targeted to pay handsomely to house these newcomers through a new category of property tax assessments. Meanwhile, the renter::property owner ratio will skyrocket, ensuring that every future ballot measure calling for new property tax assessments to feed this government lust for power, control and wealth, will be passed by renter super-majorities who have no skin in the game and who will continue to be spoon-fed the idea that property owners are the villians, instead of BIG government who created these housing and homeless conditions in the first place (e.g. issuing thousands of housing vouchers to flood the market and shift the demand curve to displace the equivalent number of market rate renters and artificially spike rents; refusing to take responsible action on the dearth of on-campus housing at UCSC; callously leaving mentally ill people to suffer on the streets to fan the flames (and optics) of homelessness; severely under-funding drug treatment programs for addicts to get back on their feet, etc.).

Renters won't FAIR MUCH BETTER. First, by ramping up property taxes, the chance of a renter eventually owning a home is made that much more infeasible. Second, being locked up into narrow income bands to remain qualified for an affordable unit, where even a small pay raise could kick someone out onto the streets, there is little incentive to achieve and even less to report income. These New York City-style welfare prisons will be under the control of giant, corporate landlords in collusion with local governmental agencies (essentially one-in-the-same) that will establish new tenant rules and, at any time, remind you who is the boss, making Covid restrictions seem like child's play. From smart thermostats, to smart water meters, to smart electric meters, to when you enter and exit the building, to what you might be watching on your devices, public housing is where government can "plug-in" to you--every facet of your life digitized by them, not because they care about you, but because they care about controlling you. And you're giving them every reason to shut you down if you don't comply to every single rule they plan to use to keep you in line while they push you into the wonderful world of pure Socialism--a failed economic model, even by Scandinavian standards, that  thrives only on the illusion of a "free lunch" at the end of some fictitious rainbow. You're only in the dark because you're meant to be in the dark and, most certainly, "dumbed down," if you will. You can thank our press for its own complicity. And notice the silence of your representatives to discuss details that they smugly (and wisely) disguise behind the unassailable phrase: "affordable housing." Why? Because the public (you) buys into it--hook, line and sinker. This is precisely why Santa Cruz has the problems that it does. Its residents have yielded their choices over to the politicians and stopped asking the tough questions. That's what the Kool-Aid pushers want you to do.

Perhaps, The saddest truth of all is that none of us will ever know whether or not the people of Santa Cruz agreed or disagreed to any of this. We simply put our trust and faith in our elected representatives--individuals who were never transparent with us--with their elusiveness, their buzz words and their silence--about this new era of housing growth. They just fed us bull ... and most residents simply found it too delicious. They denied us the details, we were not polled as a community, and we certainly weren't important enough in their scheme of things to call a special vote in what one might consider the biggest transformation this little city has experienced since the Gold Rush. Ninety-percent of us may be against this level of housing build-up, but they are not interested to know that. They will only give you what they want you to hear in the vaguest of terms as the renowned statistician and Mayor of Santa Cruz, Fred Keeley, stated in a recent interview with the Santa Cruz Sentinel: "Homelessness and affordable housing, I would say, north of 90% of the people I talked to, that was the first things out of their mouth," giving readers the false impression that 90%+ of Santa Cruzan's are supportive of whatever Mr. Keeley and his underlings have up their sleeves. There are no factual data points linked to the mayor's utterings. What there is is a whole lot of political double-speak to ensure that you are "on board" the affordable housing gravy train because 9 out of 10 of your fellow residents are ... and you don't want to feel left out, and you certainly don't want to stand up and voice your true opinion or concerns if you're in that small minority who might go so far as to disagree. That's politics 101 in California--especially here in Santa Cruz. 

It is the religion of ignorance that tyranny begins.
Benjamin Franklin

Download my Affordable Housing Highlights, below. Ciao.