Affordable and Adequate Housing for All

By Al Vargas

A demographic shift is taking place as baby boomers are beginning to retire in mass and there are insufficient young workers to replace them. At the same time, escalation of real estate prices has made home ownership unreachable for young families. These young people are our future teachers, health workers, and police officers. They are our own children. Housing options are also lacking for seniors.

Housing options are also lacking for seniors. Currently, there is a waiting list of from 3 to 7 years at alternative senior housing facilities (e.g. assisted living, convalescent hospitals, etc). This forces seniors to leave the county. Seniors have their roots and support systems here in the county and should be able to remain here. We need to provide for affordable and adequate housing options for seniors so that they do not have to leave the county to access alternative housing options.

My vision is for affordable housing for all so that we may maintain a high level of services and content seniors. We can accomplish this by adapting successful policies of other counties such as Sacramento Co Affordable Housing Ordinance. Here developers are required to build a certain percentage of the units as affordable housing or pay a fee in lieu of. We also need to offer incentives to corporations for the development of senior housing alternatives.