Over two decades, 20,000 rural residents disappeared — Why?
By Jason Hoppin
jhoppin@santacruz sentinel.com @scnewsdude on Twitter
The county’s urban services boundary, put in place by 1978′s Measure J, limits services to rural areas of the county and focuses development on the urban core.
LOMA PRIETA >> Defying trends around the booming Bay Area, the number of people living in rural areas of Santa Cruz County is in steep decline, and has been for many years.
The unmistakable drop has seen nearly 20,000 people disappear from the redwood groves and fog-shrouded valleys of the Santa Cruz Mountains since 1990. It could be the work of social forces — baby boomers wanting to be nearer services as they age, children growing up and moving away — but also appears to be the result of a foundational land-use policy put in place by county voters in 1978: Measure J.
“I think the main factor is fewer children, more retirees and upscale families with fewer children to begin with,” said Ed Weldon, a Summit-area resident and empty-nester. “When we moved here 40 years ago we had four people living in our house. Now there’s only two. That’s a 50 percent drop.”
The county’s population has grown slowly but steadily over time. But those overall numbers have masked a massive migration to the urban areas of the county’s cherished coastline, a shift that comes with profound public policy implications for traffic, housing, public transportation and more.
Signaling a big shift in the direction of the county, Measure J was a muscular anti-sprawl, pro-environment ballot measure that was also unusual in an oft-overlooked respect: It aimed to protect a region, the Santa Cruz Mountains, that had been teeming with people for more than a century.
The backbone of Measure J is the urban services line, a boundary that includes the incorporated cities of Scotts Valley, Santa Cruz, Capitola and Watsonville, and divides steep mountains from coastal prairies in unincorporated areas. On one side of the line would be one set of land-use policies; on the other, a second set.
Jason Wehmhoener lived in the mountains for more than a decade before coming to the coast, only to find it too crowded. The forest around Boulder Creek didn’t get enough sun, and the fire danger (and some of the neighbors) was crazy, he said. But Live Oak lasted three years — the neighbors were too close — before he and his wife moved near Watsonville.
“Watsonville farmland seems to strike the perfect balance for us,” Wehmhoener said.
The difference between the mountains and Live Oak has a lot to with the urban boundary, and its influence seems strong still. Detailed population numbers for 1978 are unavailable, but by 1990, when the U.S. Census began releasing more refined figures, the county’s rural population topped 90,000. In 2010, it was down to barely 71,000, even as the rest of the county grew.
Gary Patton, Measure J’s author, agrees the county’s path-breaking, slow-growth law is in play.
“The original focus of Measure J was encouraging, or focusing, or directing, new development inside an area where development had already occurred,” Patton said. “The idea was not necessarily to reduce population in rural areas but to prevent new developments that would increase population.”
Patton said Measure J was “pro-density,” with advantages have been proven over time: Valuable agricultural land was protected and per capita water use declined, a byproduct of urbanites living in closer proximity. He acknowledges some difficulties — traffic woes demand creative transit solutions, he said — but does not see a need to change the urban boundary established by Measure J.
“Not in my lifetime, and it’s interesting that it hasn’t really become an issue in many, many years now — on the order of 40 years,” Patton said. “The reason is, there’s so many opportunities for creative reuse of underutilized urban areas.”
Santa Cruz County officials are taking a close look at those now. A long-term planning effort, called the Sustainable Santa Cruz County plan, is looking at development changes along heavily trafficked corridors such as Soquel Drive.
Those changes call for further density, including raising the possibility of new buildings that crack the county’s 35-foot height cap. Nothing has been decided, but the plan underscores how urban development pressures are forcing a reconsideration of time-honored land-use policies.
Nor will the effort be without turbulence. Supervisor John Leopold represents Live Oak, Mid-County and Pleasure Point, areas that could all see significant impacts under Sustainable Santa Cruz County.
Those areas have changed in recent years, due in no small part to the county’s now-defunct redevelopment agency. Redevelopment allowed the county to plow millions into the area, paying for everything from East Cliff bluff protection to new community buildings to sidewalks and gutters, transforming an area that was pastoral and filled with farms in the not-too-distant past.
“Even redevelopment was just trying to catch up. If you think about the history of Live Oak in the early 70s, it was still rural. Kids would come to after-school programs on horseback,” Leopold said. “It urbanized very quickly.”
Leopold acknowledges that land-use patterns need to change, but bristles at aspects of the Sustainable Santa Cruz County Plan, including piercing local building height limits and the number of multifamily units envisioned for his district.
“I think that we do want to make sure that there is housing available for my children, and my children’s children. And we know that we can see the horizon on the number of single-family homes on 6,000-square-foot lots,” Leopold said. “But we also need to think about quality of life and walkable neighborhoods. It isn’t all tall buildings and apartments.”
By any measure of housing affordability — which weigh not just housing prices, but the local job market — Santa Cruz County ranks near the bottom. County Board of Supervisors Chair Zach Friend said the county struggles with high housing prices, a soft job market and limited transportation options. Allowing increased density could help all three.
“If that’s not a catalyst to shift the policy, I don’t know what is,” Friend said. “Under the current set of policies, we get what we have today, which isn’t good enough for the community.”
Because Measure J’s urban services boundary essentially bars sewer extensions into rural areas, multifamily housing is largely limited to the urban core. The burden falls on places such as Santa Cruz and Live Oak, and a 2008 effort to locate affordable homes in Felton, called Zayante Oaks, was shouted down by neighbors. The scuttled project cost the county $1.5 million in taxpayer dollars.
Projects such as Woodside along Scotts Valley Drive reflect a trend in Santa Cruz County of more densely built developments. (Photos by Shmuel Thaler Santa Cruz Sentinel)
Those kinds of projects are sorely needed in a county where the housing market is as punitive as Santa Cruz County’s. A stunning 3,500 people are homeless here — one of the highest concentrations of homeless persons in the country — yet something has kept a clear and basic need from being addressed.
A decade ago, the county had downshifted its zoning rules to the point that affordable housing was workable on just a few acres of land. Affordable housing advocates sued and won, resulting in a rezoning of 30 acres to satisfy the minimum levels needed for development, but a level that most cities would not regard as making the most out of limited space.
“From our point of view, there’s just been a reluctance, ever since the 90s, to zone land at high-enough density to provide for affordable housing,” said Gretchen Regenhardt, and attorney for Watsonville-based California Rural Legal Assistance, which helped bring that case.
Regenhardt said she is concerned that the local rental market — uncapped by any kind of rent control ordinance — continues to spiral upward without enough affordable units being built to manage the problems that creates. Federal Section 8 vouchers, which subsidize housing for low-income families, can no longer be used on many homes because the rent is too high, she added.
“Overall the market is so expensive that people are just continuing to be doubled and tripled up in housing, and living in cars, and all those terrible things that happen when you don’t have enough housing,” Regenhardt said, adding that she knows people who rent lawns to park while they sleep in their cars.
Regenhardt said she also wonders why Aptos’ massive Par 3 property — seemingly an ideal spot for urban infill — has never been developed. And why the county has been reluctant to extend sewer services, even to a mobile home park that now uses a leach field near Pinto Lake, which some regard as one of the most polluted lakes in the state.
“The fear was that it would promote development along there,” Regenhardt said. “I think there probably does have to be some adjustment to the urban services boundary at some point, because we don’t exist in a vacuum and we do keep growing.”
As part of Measure J, the county sets annual limits on new building permits. A third of those go to the rural areas and the rest set aside for urban development. Last year, those numbers were modest by any measure: 84 and 168, respectively.
But the availability of 252 new permits went barely noticed. The county issued 32 in all of 2013, and just 11 in rural areas. Nor is it an anomaly — the pattern has been in place for years.
Further, the county is projected to fall short of state housing goals set by the California Department of Housing and Community Development. Seven years in to a nine-year program, the county has built only 55 percent of its commitment, according to annual reports filed with the agency.
In June, the Association of Monterey Bay Area Governments issued new housing guidelines calling on more than 3,000 new units throughout Santa Cruz County by 2023, including 1,314 in the unincorporated area.
But the county faces a geometry problem posed by the disappearance of undeveloped urban land — one reason behind the Sustainable Santa Cruz County effort.
It was a foreseeable problem. In a 2000 report called “Raising the Roof,” state planning officials noted the rapid densification of Santa Cruz County. Between 1972 and 1996, the county was cramming more people into the same urban core at a rate matched only by a handful of fast-growing counties, Contra Costa and Orange counties among them.
Despite the region’s slow-growth reputation, the city of Santa Cruz actually matched California’s growth rate during the last decennial Census. Watsonville growth exceeded the statewide rate by half, and the two cities combined to absorb much of the county’s urban population boom.
For years, Santa Cruz has pioneered local policies to absorb more people in the same amount of space, first by allowing homeowners to build second dwellings on their parcels (a move that came with some neighborhood controversy) and lately by approving micro-sized studios and single-bedroom condos.
Santa Cruz Mayor Lynn Robinson said policymakers have to tread carefully when it comes to density, particularly outside the downtown area where neighborhood character could be impacted if too many people move in.
“I known density is not going to go away, but you have to do it thoughtfully so that it could fit the surrounding area,” Robinson said.
All of which makes the population bust in the mountains more remarkable. Back up in Ed Weldon’s summit-area Loma Prieta neighborhood, long-timers recall a different era, when fruit orchards dotted hilltops instead of vineyards, and vacationers retreated to the hills for rest and relaxation.
There once were whistle-stop towns throughout the mountains, places such as Laurel, now marked only by a small historic marker. A railroad that once connected Los Gatos and Santa Cruz via a lengthy tunnel vanished by the time World War II came, and so did the commerce that followed the tracks.
Many noted how quiet things have become. Some are even arguing if the county really wants to be sustainable, it would allow its mountain neighborhoods the smallest of amenities.
“If you want a bolt, you have to drive to Scotts Valley or Los Gatos,” Loma Prieta resident John Herr said. “For a county that prides itself on being environmentally responsible, that seems an odd way to do things.”
The theory that mountain population decline is due to an “empty nest” effect should show in one place — schools.
Until recently, the numbers seemed to bear that out. At Bonny Doon Elementary School, for example, enrollment is down 50 percent over the past decade. Yet many urban schools lost children, too.
But a funny thing happened around 2008: Local enrollment figures began going up again. That the rebound coincided with the economic crisis and collapse of the housing market has most speculating that families were no longer driven away by housing prices, and even started to come back.
Whatever the reasons, the trend is unmistakable — in the San Lorenzo Valley Unified School District, enrollment is up 27 percent since the 2007-2008 school year. Elementary school enrollment in Santa Cruz is up since then, as it is at the Soquel Union Elementary School District. And the highly regarded Loma Prieta School District has seen the same bounce.
Superintendent Corey Kidwell said many new residents are migrating up and over the hill from Silicon Valley. And while the small district is entirely dependant on local property taxes for funding — its budget is tied to a local housing market that, without new construction, isn’t producing new taxpayers — Kidwell said the new parents have helped boost school finances through fundraisers.
“We enjoy a friendly rivalry between Apple and Google parents for who can help the most.” Kidwell said.
Preserved over decades by strict county policies, the rural identity has kept mountain neighborhoods an attractive market for buyers. But without the commercial activity and community spaces that one generation passes on to the next, those rules have also, ironically, made the neighborhood ripe for change.
“Basically what it’s become up here is what everybody feared for Santa Cruz County, which is a bedroom community for Santa Clara County,” Herr said. “The places are real expensive. You’ve got to be a Silicon Valley gold-miner to get in at all.”
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