Lookout: Tensions start to flare as sides submit dueling Santa Cruz housing measures
Even in an off year, city of Santa Cruz voters are poised to be divided by yet another heated ballot measure campaign.
In spring of 2024, voters had to decide whether they agreed with Measure M’s effort to cap the heights of new buildings, or side with growth and development advocates. Then, in the fall, more than $2 million poured into the community as Big Soda attempted to fight Measure Z’s proposed sugar-sweetened beverage tax.
Now, this fall, the dueling factions behind two affordable housing measures plan to stake yet another battle in the public square, as the county’s realtors and its housing advocates work to persuade voters to side with them.
This week marked a major milestone in that effort. On Wednesday, the Santa Cruz County Association of Realtors submitted 6,051 signatures in support of placing its Workforce Housing and Climate Protection Act on the Nov. 4 ballot. On Thursday, the group led by Santa Cruz Mayor Fred Keeley and Housing Santa Cruz County’s Elaine Johnson submitted 4,170 signatures in support of balloting its Workforce Housing and Affordability Act.
Each petition needs 3,620 signatures from registered city of Santa Cruz voters to qualify for the ballot, and each side says they used their own signature verification system to ensure the submitted names are valid. The county clerk now has 30 days to certify the petitions. If both measures qualify, the Santa Cruz City Council is scheduled to vote at its June 24 meeting to place each on the ballot. In November, the measure with the highest support over 50% will win.
The similarly named acts each propose a citywide parcel tax — a flat annual fee levied on all land parcels throughout the city of Santa Cruz — as well as a real estate transfer tax — a fee charged when a piece of real property transfers ownership.
Lookout previously pored through each measure to highlight the myriad technical differences, but broadly, the measure proposed by Keeley and Johnson puts forward a greater and broader tax and expects to bring in around $5 million per year toward affordable housing and homelessness initiatives. The realtors’ proposed taxes are lower and more narrow, and thus expect to bring in a fraction of their rivals’.
The realtors have also been upfront that their measure was designed only to defeat the Keeley/Johnson proposal, which was the product of an intermittent, 18-month shaping process with different sectors of the community.
On Thursday, Keeley and Johnson hosted an event outside Santa Cruz City Hall to mark the submission of their signatures. The event’s fiery rhetoric offered a preview of what Santa Cruz voters are likely to hear as the campaigns heat up over the summer.
“Our quarrel is that a narrow special interest didn’t get their way and has decided that the way to get their way is to scuttle a proposal that was built for two years by the entire community,” Keeley said.
After the event, Keeley, who liberally used the phrase “dirty political trick” throughout the hour to describe the opposing effort, said the realtors’ proposal would “have no impact on affordable housing.”
Victor Gomez, the Santa Cruz County Association of Realtors’ director of government affairs and lone architect of the group’s housing measure, said he was “taken aback that the proponents of the other initiative are against voters having options.” He also pushed against the claim that his measure won’t raise a meaningful sum for affordable housing.
“We had the option of making our parcel tax as low as a dollar per year, but we didn’t do that,” Gomez said. “We’re able to save people money with a lower [parcel] tax than Keeley that still generates some decent revenue,” which he estimated at $1 million per year. The realtors’ most significant qualm with the Keeley/Johnson measure is the real estate transfer tax, which SCCAR is “philosophically” against, according to the group’s president, Renee Mello. However, in order to compete directly against that measure at the ballot box, the realtors’ measure needed to mirror Keeley and Johnson’s in kind. Gomez referred to SCCAR’s proposed real estate transfer tax as a “mansion tax” since fees kick in only for home sales of at least $4 million. The Keeley/Johnson measure’s tax kicks in for home sales of at least $1.8 million.
Gomez described SCCAR’s summer campaign strategy as “money, money, money,” as in, relentless fundraising to ensure the group has enough resources to launch an effective campaign by late summer.
During her group’s submission event on Thursday, Johnson said supporters needed to prepare for a battle.
“This fight is not over,” Johnson said. “We made it this far together, and we’re going to need that same energy and commitment to get this to pass in November.”