Blog 103- Response to Councilman Dugan's (San Carlos) comments Jan 29 SM Daily Journal

On review of Councilman Dugan's Perspective published Jan 29-30, I believe there is an absence, in the public square, of a serious discussion on truly 'affordable housing' for our workforce.

To begin, commercial developers are not building any affordable housing for our workforce and city councils typically pay little time addressing the true issue. My challenge to the councilman is to show me an assessment of what housing stock exists that rents out between $800 to $1,800 per month while also providing adequate profitability to the builder / homeowner?

On my analysis, only small ADUs having an area between a 150 sq-ft minimum and about 450 sq ft can meet this critical housing need in our communities. Paying homage to an ‘affordable housing’ paradigm does NOT provide the housing of the workforce that serves us every day within our communities. The State has finally empowered homeowners to develop their parcel after decades of neglect and abuse of property rights. Homeowners need to own the problem, assess their community housing needs and demand incentives to develop their parcels while pushing back on those council members that obstruct workforce housing with unnecessary reviews and an enforcement of ordinances that are inconsistent with the State’s ADU laws.

Our taxes are far to high to continue supporting deadpan governance on the peninsula.