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The California Apartment Association is leading an effort to identify available housing for residents left homeless by the devastating fires in Sonoma and Napa counties.
Some of the displaced families are looking for short-term (up to six months) housing, just long enough for their fire-damaged housing to be rehabilitated. Others are looking for long-term, permanent housing. As the need is great and varied, CAA is calling on the rental housing industry to help identify available units.
CAA aims to provide the city of Santa Rosa, as well as Sonoma and Napa counties, with a comprehensive list of vacant units so… Read More
Tagged: Philanthropy 2017 Wildfires North Bay
When voters rejected Measure C this past June, it put a protracted battle over rent control to rest in Santa Rosa. With the election behind us, it’s time to work together as a community and focus on real solutions that will provide affordable homes for local families in Sonoma County.
Although Measure C was the highest-profile issue in the region this year, important issues for the rental housing industry are ongoing in the region.
Here’s a quick update on several of them:
Members of the California Apartment Association are encouraged to attend a workshop next month focused on boosting affordable housing in Sonoma County.
The informational discovery workshop, scheduled for Sept. 19, comes as the Rent Sonoma County Committee and local rental housing providers explore a partnership to increase the availability of units for low-income renters.
The session is set to run from 1:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. at the Community Development Commission Hearing Room, 1440 Guerneville Road, Santa Rosa.
Tagged: Affordable housing North Bay
More than six months of rent control is coming to an end in the city of Sebastopol.
The city, which has capped annual rent increases at 3 percent since Nov. 1, will allow its rent moratorium to expire by the end of today, June 16.
After a strong grassroots campaign by the California Apartment Association and its allies, Santa Rosa’s rent control and just-cause eviction measure went down in defeat Tuesday.
The people of Santa Rosa rejected Measure C with 52.5 percent of the vote, compared with 47.5 percent in favor of rent control.
“Voters understood that Measure C would have come at high costs while assisting only a fraction of the population,” said Joshua Howard, CAA’s senior vice president for Northern California. “Now, Santa Rosa can focus on the real solution to its housing crisis — building more homes.”
In an editorial urging a no vote on Measure C, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat calls rent control a “drastic step” and “the most heavy-handed of solutions” to the city’s housing crisis.
After the California Apartment Association qualified a referendum on Santa Rosa’s rent control ordinance, the City Council on Tuesday decided to put the issue before voters in a June 6 special election.
The council had two other options: to repeal the law or place it before voters in November 2018.
Election officials this week confirmed that enough signatures were collected to qualify a referendum on Santa Rosa’s rent control ordinance.
Sonoma County’s registrar of voters counted 9,648 valid signatures, far more than the 8,485 needed for the referendum to qualify.
The registrar first confirmed the success of the signature-gathering effort in mid-October. Later that month, however, the registrar determined that a hand count was needed to certify the results.
Tagged: Rent Control North Bay