History of the housing crisis

Because the book was published before the end of World War II, it does not touch on California’s growth after it. The last instance of the state’s growth that is addressed is after the Great War, (as First World War was known prior to the outbreak of the second). Myriad factors played a role, including the war, the growth of the oil industry, the expansion of train and automobile travel and the invention and manufacturing of the airplane. In each instance of growth California faced, however, it was always able to accommodate because land and other resources remained abundant. If a shortage of anything existed, it was water and that was smartly addressed by the engineers who designed and built the dams, reservoirs and aqueducts still in use today.

Fast forward from where the book leaves off to when I moved to the Bay Area in the earlier 1980s. What I found was a vibrant and healthy state. In terms of housing, it was not hard to find a place to live. While my initial “home” was sleeping on a friend’s couch for a month, I soon found a room in a house, renting from a family for $300 a month. Next came sharing a two bedroom apartment near City College with three other guys. We each paid $400. When I wanted my own place, I easily found a one bedroom apartment in San Carlos. It rented for $750 a month. At no time in my search for housing was it difficult to find. Even when it came to buying a house, doing so was relatively easy compared to today’s market. All the cities on the Peninsula, San Carlos included, had an adequate supply of single-family homes, duplexes, condominiums and apartments from which to choose, or so that was my impression.

Then I ran for San Carlos City Council in 1999 and was informed otherwise. We were experiencing a “housing crisis.” It was said to affect teachers and firefighters particularly hard because homes were too expensive for them to buy or rent in the Bay Area. Compounding the problem, we desperately needed these folks to live in the same community where they worked. I found this odd because it did not square with my experience. I was always able to find an affordable place to live and always near my work. That is not to say the problem did not exist but to call it a “crisis” may have been a little overblown.

Today we actually do find ourselves in the midst of a housing crisis and the question is why? We have planners who seem to have known for decades that we have a “jobs/housing imbalance.” If that indeed is the problem in a nutshell, then why is not one we can solve? Certainly, as anyone who looks around on the San Francisco Peninsula can see, we have built a great number of new, high density buildings from South San Francisco all the way down to Santa Clara, and yet the housing crisis persists. Why? In my next column, I will offer further observations and my opinion.

A former member of the San Carlos City Council and mayor, Matt Grocott has been involved in political policy on the Peninsula for 17 years. He can be reached by email at mattgrocott@comcast.net.