According to a recent report, in Santa Cruz the fair market rate for a two-bedroom rental home is $4,054. Assuming not more than 30% of their income is spent on rent, this puts the effective living wage at just under $40 per hour for two wage earners sharing a 2-bedroom house. For those who choose an apartment, the baseline ends up being closer to a more attainable $30 per hour. And for students or couples starting out who earn closer to minimum wage, it’s not uncommon for two people to share a bedroom, but it’s also motivation to find a better paying job to sustain what most would consider a dignified lifestyle.
While it is without question preferable to be able to afford the setting you feel you need live out your life’s story, in the short run sometimes necessity leads to creative solutions to achieve an above-average experience as was demonstrated with style by the recent subway car wedding celebration that happened on the L train in New York, complete with a live DJ, drinks and the wedding cake that was served to the invited guests alongside any drop-in passengers who happened to board that particular car on that particular afternoon of its 45-minute route.
When you contrast this with the stories of celebrities who have all the money they could ever spend on lavish weddings and fancy homes, only never to find true happiness, it underscores the fact that having a big budget isn’t always the key to having a high quality of life. The key as I see it is to always strive upward, while also finding ways to enjoy the present within the limits of what your immediate constraints will allow, while we as a community work towards creating more opportunity.
Creativity will only take us so far and eventually it would be good to see affordability become attainable for more people than today, which is the goal of the current housing mandates handed down by the State. Although given the fact that big cities like San Francisco have high density and still have high rates of homelessness, it’s also clear that increasing density alone will not magically solve our housing and social issues.
San Francisco has a density of 16,650 people per square mile. By comparison, the city of Santa Cruz has a density of 3,854 people per square mile. And even with the 3700 or so proposed housing units downtown it would still only bring our total number of residents per square mile to about a quarter of the density of San Francisco. On the other hand, San Francisco’s population is declining at an annual rate of -2.54%, which tells me that conditions aren’t balanced enough for their current population to either want or be able to stay there.
The challenge at hand for us will be in the process of continuing to build the next iteration of the town we love with a constant eye on what we are creating as we go. And the hope is that we can get the balance right to design and maintain a city that doesn’t lose its unique identity—and be a place where people can both afford to live and want to continue living here.
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