How will Wine Country remain a viable tourist destination if workers can’t afford to live there?
That is just a small part of the big picture. To obtain permits to build apartments or houses you pretty much have to “dedicate” a percentage of them as “affordable” housing. Once the permits are issued, changes happen. 135 apartments and 43 homes become 55 apartments and the willingness to accept a few HUD tenants. Restaurants here are scrambling for employees, let alone good employees. With all the building, nothing has been/is being done about traffic. We are pretty much grid locked now without any plan to relieve the congestion. There are two more hotels being built right now to add to the congestion. Downtown has a lack of parking. The county expects the state to correct the two highways through Napa County. Gavin Newsom just took a big portion of the extra gas tax we pay to stash some for the train to nowhere and support green projects. Cal Trans has already stopped planning on highway expansion in several counties. It used to be no big deal to live in American Canyon, Fairfield, Sonoma or Vallejo and commute to Napa. The 10 to 20 mile commute can be up to an hour now, with a serious accident closing the road entirely, leaving only 4 roads into Napa.
Workers should buy the very few homes which zoning laws allow to be constructed. Then, the artificial, NIMBY-driven appreciation can supplement their wages.
Victor, the new apartments across the street from our store rent 1 bedroom for 2150, 2 bedroom 2350 and 3 bedroom for 2550 a month. A garage is 150 per month and your pets are 100 per month each. The mortgage on my house including impound account 1790. My house appraised for 980K though I owe very little on it.
Yes. Because people making $10 an hour are the prime ones buying $1 million homes.
When are you returning to planet earth?
This isn’t just an issue in wine country, but much of the San Francisco Bay Area. Workers who earn less than $25 an hour are priced out of living in the area, leaving service positions in every field wanting. There are restaurants closing because they can’t keep employees. This is a problem all over.
Tents are cheap and you don’t need a bathroom.
Mic drop. Walk away.
No doubt your landlord appreciates the monthly check from you supporting his/her wages…
I used to have a large fish tank. At $100 per pet, that could be expensive!
Your response fell right into my trap: That is the other-world, self-inflicted, conflicted nature of California policies.
Zoning laws fight denser home construction at economic activity centers, while anti-pollution policies try to fight the resultant automobile sprawl for commuting to and from there. The escalated rents and prices of homes then feed new homelessness, now among the workers at restaurants, stores, schools, etc. Both policies cannot simultaneously succeed, and the latter seems likely to continue dominating, while the latter fails. Meanwhile, the social and economic costs of both will hit every citizen and consumer.
California thereby manages to blow off all eleven of its ten toes, with a half-loaded six-barrel pistol.
Please quit regurgitating the same ol’ same ol’ generic pablum that you usually do.
Instead, kindly and specifically advise us how an agricultural community that has metamorphosed into a luxury destination can solve issues around housing, infrastructure and transportation without resorting to eminent domain?
Answer: Allow private property owners to build denser housing on their own land, which does not involve eminent domain.
Indeed, when neighbors weaponize zoning laws to prevent land owners from doing so, that is de facto property seizure with zero public-sector payment…an extreme version of eminent domain.
This is expressed very well. I live here in the middle of this.
See prior suggestion. Nobody has sought eminent domain.
Victor, you who prefer to live in a high-rise rental, have not a clue about living in an agricultural community. I live within the Agricultural Preserve. I choose to do so. The regulations IN ORDER TO PRESERVE OPEN SPACE AND AGRICULTURAL PURSUITS prevent building us into small cities. In my 'hood, you must have 40 acres of land in order to build another domicile. If you go up the street, it becomes 160 acres required for another building. This is designed to preserve agriculture, watersheds, view sheds, water availability, etc. Sometimes you don’t have a clue what you are talking about. We have wells and septic systems, as well as propane gas, as opposed to piped in (or out) municipal services. There is not limitless water and land to support everyone turning their property into a multi-dwelling property.
Building more densely enables that open land to remain for agriculture, rather than new highways and single-family house yards.
If denser housing allows us low-paid noodle slingers to live near work, less money is spent on commuting and highways.
Sprawling people widely actually raises the costs of municipal infrastructure.
You just do not get it, Victor, and I am done (in this thread) with trying to educate you.
Where are my statements illogical or counterfactual?
It seems to me that Napa businesses have to provide efficient transportation from less expensive neighborhoods or pay higher wages.
So in regards to the OP’s question, maybe the answer is that it can’t. Perhaps agricultural preserve and tourism is not a sustainable combination.