Close to Home: Putting a ‘fair share’ of housing across Santa Rosa

We all know that our housing shortage is a major challenge for Santa Rosa. We also know that housing is so fundamental to the character of our city that how we meet, or fail to meet, this challenge will determine the future of our community for years to come.

With this in mind, a couple of months ago a diverse group came together to think about what we would need to do to meet this challenge. Our group, Santa Rosa Housing for All, includes leaders from neighborhoods, architecture and planning, business and faith-based communities. We hoped to combine our insights to address our challenge. It helped that many of us knew each other through our work with Santa Rosa Together.

In today's world, where deep divisions and low levels of trust are the norm, developing the kind of agreement and support we need to develop and implement a housing plan for Santa Rosa is a tall order. But there are no shortcuts or ways around this. We must turn the housing crisis into an opportunity to get more people engaged and bolster our ability to work together.

What will we need to get extensive involvement to address this issue? Once we have wide-ranging participation, how can we create a process that will enable us, with all of our differences, to find the common ground?

To obtain real involvement from our residents, we need to start with an agreement on a fair distribution of new housing throughout the city.

To accomplish that, we propose that each of our new City Council districts commit to a fair share of the housing we need.

To achieve this goal, residents will need to know that their involvement is meaningful. We suggest that residents in each district be given the power to determine where and how the housing will be built, so that they can ensure that it is done in a way that strengthens their neighborhood and their district.

These district plans would, of course, be developed with and reviewed by city staff to ensure that they meet existing regulations and legal requirements.

To find common ground, we believe three things are needed.

First, develop a trusted source of information on housing options and costs so that we have the facts as a common starting point.

The architectural and planning community, health department, schools, labor leaders and government staff can provide us with this information.

Second, we need to develop a process that allows residents, renters and owners in every district to meet face-to-face, exchange ideas and find common ground.

Third, we need to provide training to government staff and resident leaders in each district so that they have the information and skills they need to lead the discussions.

Doing these things will take time and commitment from all of us, but if we're successful a united city working together on a plan that creates housing for all would make it worthwhile. Isn't it time to begin to create institutions and practices that modernize our democracy and improve its ability to engage everyone, build trust and learn to work together to meet future challenges?

If you want to help us in this work to engage and unite all of us on a plan for housing for all, please contact Michael Cook at ma_cook@sonic.net and join Santa Rosa Housing for All, the new coalition we have formed to engage all of us.

Michael Cook, a planner and landscape architect, lives in Rincon Valley.

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