HomeMy WebLinkAbout3/5/2024 Item 8a, Smyth
carolyn smith <
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Subject:March 5, 2024 Council Meeting - Housing Study
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Mayor Stewart and councilmembers,
This city has been plagued with high housing sales and rental prices for many years. Despite the city
(and the state) easing restrictions to build housing, the affordability problem has gotten worse here in
SLO. A curious phenomenon is that each time the city approves a new housing project, the price of
my home goes up, since the new home pricing is very high.
Staff's report reflects a genuine concern that is the elephant in the room no one seems to want to
include in assessing our housing needs and affordability. I like to refer to it as "the college student
effect." When a city has a rental population as high as SLO, with 60% of our homes being rentals,
many of which house Cal Poly and Cuesta students who are able to pay high rents, affordability goes
out the window. Staff's chart shows that at the very least, 15,600 19-24 year olds (college age)
occupy our housing units. I believe it's much higher than that since (1) this was information collected
from the census four years ago and (2) many young adults do not complete the census. Additionally,
Cal Poly has already warned this council in their most recent housing presentation that they plan to
increase enrollment over the next several years to the tune of 300-400 additional students per year
until and IF they build their planned on-campus housing. The impact to our city's housing will
continue to be burdened by Cal Poly's failure to build an adequate amount of housing for their
students on campus while increasing enrollment. Affordability will never improve, no matter how
much you build, since Investors (many of whom have purchased a large number of units) can make
large profits by charging college students high rent. This has a huge effect on the pricing of our new
and existing residential units. Families are outbid by investors when trying to purchase a home and
are out priced from renting a home due to the high student rental pricing. I think everyone has
acknowledged that affordable by design hasn't worked here as expected and I believe it's partly
because of the college student effect.
I think it would be helpful to know if there is any proof from other areas in this state that demonstrates
if you build a lot of higher density housing, affordability improves. I know it's a planning theory, but I
see cities all over this state that are very dense yet still very expensive to live in. It appears that what
we're ending up with here is more small, higher density units at higher prices which then drives up all
other housing prices in the city. This results in over-burdening our infrastructure that then requires
upgrading, costing residents more and more to live here. Two young families in my middle-class
neighborhood moved out of SLO during the past 2 years, despite both sets of parents working at
decent paying jobs, because they could no longer afford to live here.
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I'm sure the building, realtor, and business industries in this city will encourage you to continue down
this same path of building more and more higher density smaller units whereby they can make
significant profits. But, I'm asking you to look at this situation from a different perspective rather than
continuing on with the same drive to build higher density units that hasn't resulted in providing
affordable housing, particularly for the middle-income workforce. Perhaps, directing more effort
toward requiring Cal Poly to build more on-campus housing sooner, and not increase their enrollment
before then, will be more effective. If more students live on campus, there will be less competition for
housing in the city, resulting in lowering prices, so families can afford to compete. Just building more
high-density housing, most likely resulting in more student rentals, will only continue to drive prices
higher and turn away working families.
Thank you.
Carolyn Smith
SLO City Resident
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