Golis: How will people pay the rent?

In “A Christmas Carol,” two gentlemen enter Ebenezer Scrooge’s office and ask for a donation to help the poor. Scrooge waves them away.

“You wish to be anonymous?” Asked one of the visitors.

“I wish to be left alone,” said Scrooge.

It is a familiar story by now. In the age of globalization, working class Americans are being clobbered, and no one seems able or willing to help them. Worn down by recession and political dysfunction, many of their fellow citizens just want to be left alone.

In Sonoma County, people who tend to make less now pay more for housing. Staff Writer Robert Digitale reported last week that rents at major apartment complexes increased 30 percent in the last three years.

If you’re living from month-to-month, you now have less money to spend on health care, food, transportation, kids’ shoes, everything. If the money runs out, your family will be more likely to join the more than 10,000 people who become homeless at some time during the year. And your children will be more likely to go to school hungry (which means they will be less likely to be successful).

More than four in 10 Sonoma County households live in apartments or rental homes. More than half of all California renters spend more than 35 percent of their incomes on housing. While home values are below what they were in 2006, according to the Public Policy Institute of California, rents are higher.

And there are more renters all the time. Even with a real estate market on the mend, home ownership rates continue a decline that began before the 2008 recession.

What’s at work here are economic changes that reach beyond cycles of prosperity and recession. In simple terms, millions of middle class jobs that could be outsourced to other countries were outsourced to other countries. In the last 30 years, the Washington Post reported last week, middle-income Americans saw their share of the nation’s income fall from 60 percent to 45 percent.

In Sonoma County, the run-up in rents will lead to a debate about the responsibility of landlords and the potential for rent control laws to make everything OK. This argument is inevitable, but it would be helpful if it didn’t lead people to believe that rent controls alone will solve the problem.

The story of skyrocketing rents becomes the latest reminder that we are at risk of becoming communities of haves and have-nots. Earlier this year, a local study analyzed health, education and income factors and drew a bleak picture of the disparities among neighborhoods. The percentage of people living in poverty increased last year, and per capita income declined.

While Congress chooses to ignore the widening gap between the wealthy and everyone else, wise and compassionate communities will seek ways to mitigate the worst impacts.

Earlier this month, the Board of Supervisors allocated $3.3 million to affordable housing projects - while acknowledging it won’t be enough to solve the problem. Supervisors were told the rental vacancy rate is 1.5 percent.

Whatever your opinion of new development, it’s not OK that Sonoma County added 18,000 new jobs in the past three years and only 70 market-rate rental units. That just doesn’t work. When demand outstrips supply, the law of supply and demand will dictate the outcome.

These circumstances re-introduce a subject that causes discomfort all-around. Apartments and other kinds of affordable housing developments almost always encounter intense neighborhood opposition. People don’t mind developments that make housing more affordable, but they would prefer them to be located in someone else’s backyard.

As the Public Policy Institute of California noted, ”Throughout the state, balancing new housing construction with environmental goals will be a challenge.” Nevertheless, PPIC experts urged communities to review regulations and fees that contribute to higher rents.

Around here, it’s not difficult to imagine this conversation devolving into another simplistic debate, pitting neighborhood groups against real estate interests.

That would be too bad - because no one wins when working people can’t afford, or can’t find, housing. In the short term, the human costs would be tragic. In the long term, an absence of working class housing would be devastating to the local economy.

None of this will be easy. Solutions require politicians and citizens’ group prepared to put aside the old dogma and think about their world in new ways.

In our optimism (and isolation), we wanted to believe that life was good for everyone who lives in Sonoma County. Now we know better. The questions is: What are we going to do about it?

Which brings us back to Ebenezer Scrooge. Scrooge, of course, is only a fictional character created more than 170 years ago. There’s really no reason to pay attention to him.

But - just so you know - he was visited by the ghosts of Christmases past, present and future, and then he decided he no longer wanted to be indifferent to the deprivations of others. Instead, he promised, “I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.”

Pete Golis is a columnist for The Press Democrat. Email him at golispd@gmail.com.