We urge the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors and Santa Rosa City Council to support housing and generational impact by investing in housing production and rental assistance for our all of our neighbors and families.

Our community is facing a perfect storm of crises – housing, health, economic. We have a singular opportunity to overcome all these crises at once by investing in our people, our homes, and our future.

More and more affordable housing has topped the City of Santa Rosa’s, the County of Sonoma’s, and community priority lists for several years.  For good reason. We didn’t have enough housing before the wildfires took 5 percent of the City’s housing stock in a single night, and more county-wide. Even our local kids worry about housing, with a recent survey revealing that 91 percent of the County’s students naming “affordable housing” as our number one community need.

Now, the pandemic has laid bare that housing is inextricably linked with our community’s education, economy, and health. The economic shut-down is speeding us toward an enormous rental shortfall that threatens the housing and health of thousands of our community members, the ripple effects of which will accelerate our local economy’s downward spirals.

Just when we need it most, the City of Santa Rosa and the County have received their PG&E settlement dollar.  Together, they reportedly received $245 million; $95 million by the City and $149 million by the County.

A fair share of the settlement money will and should go to unmet fire recovery needs and fire prevention.  Our needs certainly eclipse the remainder, so prioritizing that spending is a critical decision point. The City and County can either spend it on short-term projects, or they can invest it in long-term solutions.

Generation Housing (Gen H) urges the City and County to invest.  They should seize this one-time opportunity with one-time money to be bold, collaborative, and innovative to keep people in their homes, and to work toward solving our housing crisis. This investment will also work to catalyze our economic recovery as homebuilding is a powerful economic engine and local job creator.

Gen H urges investment in the following initiatives:

First, create a COVID-19 Rent Assistance Fund. Gen H research done in partnership with New York University, shows the magnitude of the impending rental shortfall supports a joint rent assistance fund of $28 million for our community.  

The $28 million covers six months of rent for the more than 25,000 households in Sonoma County suffering a COVID-related job loss, so long as enhanced benefits are extended by either the federal or state government. This program could support the health and well-being of local residents having to endure job loss due to the pandemic as well as protect rental housing providers. This is how we can continue the flow of money through our local economy—helping us pivot toward recovery.

Second, fully seed the Renewal Enterprise District’s Housing Fund. The City of Santa Rosa and County earned statewide accolades for their collaboration and innovation in creating the Renewal Enterprise District (RED). Now we have an opportunity to put their bold initiative to real work.

The RED is facilitating the creation of a new housing fund in response to our well-documented, unmet need for affordable and market-rate infill housing. Initial seed capital of $20 million will grow by attracting significantly more outside funding, empowering the fund to push projects across the funding finish line and get shovels in the ground.

These two initiatives, totaling $48 million, may seem pricey, but in total it’s only 11 percent of the total settlement. Isn’t that a reasonable amount to invest in our number one priority?  Isn’t that a small price to keep thousands of our neighbors in their homes, make a leap toward solving our housing crisis, and jumpstart our economic recovery?  

We encourage our elected leaders to boldly meet the singular opportunity of the moment by both investing in housing and pivoting us toward economic recovery. This is not spending. This is investing with generational impact.