[mwattsun]

I'm 66, born and raised in Santa Cruz with family there and it's bizarre when your sleepy surf town turns into the hottest real estate market in California, which might make it the hottest market in the world, and none of your children, nieces and nephews can afford to live there. There's a adage in Santa Cruz that we all know well "Once you move from Santa Cruz you'll never be able to afford to move back." Many small towns across America are experiencing depopulation and poverty. Santa Cruz is the opposite, experiencing wealth and luxury. I have no further comment except to say it seems unusual.

Edit: I'm not living there. I'm over the hill in San Jose where rents are more affordable and I can't move back.

Edit2: The locals blame giving UCSC students a vote in local politics on our woes, because they are transients, progressive and don't understand local issues, preferring to preserve greenspace and the environment over growth. I'm happy with the greenspace and acccept the cost of maintaining it - I'm not complaining, merely sharing how strange it is to be priced out of your home town.

[epistasis]

This was the explicit plan for Santa Cruz, to stop all housing after the 70s and 80s and see a massive rise in property values.

It's all there in the opinion articles and letters to the editor from the time, this future was predicted. It was the plan that was accepted by leaders at the time.

[gen220]

You could go further and say this was the plan for California writ large. This is the natural conclusion of Prop 13 (1978).

[baron816]

Yes, people flooded in and then firmly shut the door behind them.

[mwattsun]

I'm not aware of any such plan. The plan was always to preserve open space such as Lighthouse Field and the green belt around Santa Cruz. I'm grateful for both of those. Property values would have risen even if they had built on Lighthouse field and the green belt. It just occured to me that I could think of them as the equivalent of NYC's Central Park or SF's Golden Gate Park.

[japhyr]

Santa Cruz is certainly an outlier, but we're definitely seeing it all over the country.

I'm in a small town in southeast AK. Most of the buildable land has already been claimed. Tourism is growing faster than local people can support the industry, so there's all kinds of pressures: housing for summer employees, an increased temptation to do short term rentals to tourists instead of long term rentals to locals, and people buying second and third homes that they don't use most of the year.

Many of us watch our young people leave to go find their place in the world, and then find they can't move back even if they wanted to. The ones who do are paid really well, or have their housing largely subsidized by being given property their family bought a long time ago, or some similar assistance that isn't generally available to everyone.

For the past several years, multiple schools in our town have been unable to fill empty teaching positions because the people who are hired spend all spring and half the summer looking for housing, and simply can't find it. They bail and go somewhere that's willing to hire them and has some kind of housing available.

It's really a mess.

[vaidhy]

The most obvious answer seem to be around population density. What is the population density of your small town? Why would the developers not build multi-story apartments/condos?

Why is there no supply of multi-family buildings anywhere outside of cities? If everyone wants a single family home with a yard, you are going to run into space limitations.

[mwattsun]

I feel a certain kind of sadness about it. There's not a word for the loss of your home town in English that I'm aware of, but there's a song that comes close to it.

Pretenders - My City Was Gone

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thu8DWsirJo

[terminous]

If there are 5 houses in an area, populated by 1 family each for a total of 5 families, and those families have 1 child each (50% below population replacement rate), then with no new houses, there is no way for any of those children to have a house of their own until their parents die. But when their parents die, they get to have a home of their own.

At 2 children, the population replacement rate, only one child can have a house of their own after their parents die, if no new houses are constructed.

[jinjin2]

That assumes that the children stay single as they grow up. If they all get a partner it is no longer one house - one person. You literally only need half as many houses.

[BobaFloutist]

That's assuming that none of the children marry children from other families and consolidate back into one household.

[thomastjeffery]

That's what happens when the low-income job market is dominated by the service industry. When wealth gets geographically concentrated, low-income workers have to follow it, and can't.

The worst part is that the wealth isn't getting concentrated into the hands of people: it's getting concentrated into the hands of landowners.

* If you are poor and pay rent, you're fucked

* If you are poor, but own your home, you are just OK; but would be better off if services were cheaper and more available (as a result of poor renters not being fucked)

* If you are rich, but pay rent, you are just OK, but would be better off if rent was lower (and poor renters wouldn't be fucked. Win-win!)

*If you are rich and own your home, then you are lucky enough to be the problem. Even so, you would be better off if rent was lower, because services would become more available, and your community would be safer and happier.

[fragmede]

There's a fifth category; rich, own your home, and a couple more. If you're a landlord, high rents mean more money in your pocket and who doesn't want more money? The broader community effects of high rents are secondary to being able to afford a new car and a foreign vacation every few years.

[givemeethekeys]

Who do you blame if the big industry in town that has been growing for decades is projected to keep growing but the locals decide to not take advantage of it?

The best universities, community colleges, amazing tool libraries to learn the trades, yet.. all these people who move half way around the world to settle with no credit and hardly any savings to start end up buying a home, yet the locals can’t figure it out. Decade after decade.

[reducesuffering]

> all these people who move half way around the world to settle with no credit and hardly any savings to start end up buying a home, yet the locals can’t figure it out.

That's because it's brain drain on the rest of the world. You're importing some of the world's most educated people in and of course they outcompete the locals.

[RandallBrown]

Based on what's going on in Seattle and San Francisco, you blame the big industry.

[eastbound]

Are you saying the unis in Santa Cruz are sufficient to raise yourself to millionaire, and the local high schools sufficient to get into those unis? I’m not from the US, genuinely asking. But I have often seen unis have a far-distance preference, just for the social mix, while letting down the locals.

[BobbyJo]

I mean, if you're saying the locals (a population of what? a million?) should be able to compete with the best and brightest from the entire planet (9 billion?) or move, then I have to disagree.

[ChuckMcM]

Places change and grow. It's interesting that my kids have found places that speak to them (not the SF Bay Area) and they are growing with their towns as well. One wonders if your nieces and nephews will have the same situation.

There are clearly young families moving in around me, and the real estate market is brisk with houses changing hands quickly, but we've also added about 1500 higher density homes in the area which have afforded even more opportunities for where to live for these folks moving here. Certainly some of them prefer not doing maintenance etc which comes with home ownership.

Looking back at the city's decision to increase high density housing it has been a solid improvement.

[cafard]

Back in the early 1970s, Boulder, Colorado, had a referendum on restricting housing starts. It was pitched as an environmental thing, and it probably got help from the students at the University of Colorado. The referendum passed with absolutely massive turnout--precincts ran out of ballots.

[mleo]

This is pretty common across a number of smaller cities in California, especially beach cities. I moved into current home in Southern California 10 years back and probably not in a position to move in to any home in the city now, even with total family income increasing over this time.

[holoduke]

Its practically everywhere in the world. Every city i mean. Maybe in SC on a extreme level, but even where I live in Amsterdam its 1.000.000 for an apartment. Which results in 4000 euros per month. Impossible for starters.

[greedo]

This has happened where I grew up. All the coastal California towns have priced out the majority of people who grew up there.

[jareklupinski]

> I'm 66, born and raised in Santa Cruz... and none of your children, nieces and nephews can afford to live there

i mean, you're still living there too... where did you expect them to be? two objects can't occupy the same space at the same time

since we can't 'make land' (unless we dredge), the only logical place to put living habitats is up in the sky (we don't like living in holes in the ground)

[radicaldreamer]

There’s a ton of land that can be developed around Santa Cruz, it just can’t be developed due to public policy and local opposition.

Huge empty tracts all over and especially around Ben Lomond etc.

The flip side of all this is that a lot of long term residents love that their 100-200k houses are now worth a million+ with their property taxes capped at essentially nothing. They don’t want to give that up to allow their nieces and nephews to afford to grow their families in Santa Cruz.