When Affordable Solutions to the Housing Shortage Are Illegal (Part 7)

After losing a lease on a rental home in 2013, a vineyard manager in Santa Clara County asked his boss if he could move a 42’ trailer to the back of the vineyard so he could continue to work there and raise his family in the area. Four years later, the county discovered the arrangement through an anonymous and false complaint about a sewage violation that has cost the vineyard and its owner $120,000 in assessed fines since 2019 for violating a zoning ordinance that prohibits residents from living in RVs. Even though the owner attempted to remedy the situation by applying for a permit to erect a mobile or manufactured home as an ADU on the property it took over 4 years for the county to issue him the permit during which he was penalized $100 a day, by a county hearing officer, for not evicting his employee from his property, an action that would make it impossible for the vineyard manager and his family to stay in the county as there are no affordable rental options. An average 900 sqft apartment in Santa Clara costs around $3,200 a month which is unaffordable even to someone making the average vineyard manager salary of $70,000 annually as it would consume well over half their pre-tax income. Instead of granting a variance given the manager’s employment relationship with the property owner the shitlibs who run Santa Clara County have decided to impose the full amount of fines, without allowing the owner to dispute the fines in front of an independent judge, and delay a permit for four years. Santa Clara County officials undoubtedly profess a belief that our country needs more affordable housing while making such arrangements illegal in their own backyard and enacting zoning ordinances and delaying permits in a manner that makes housing scarce and costlier.

The case is Martin v. U.S.

When you get down to the brass tax, shitlib property owners prioritize their class interests over their feigned altruistic intentions for low income renters and the homeless. Conservative homeowners are at least forthright and honest in regard to prioritizing their home equity over affordability, but it is two faced shitlibs who pretend that their largely ineffective patchwork of vouchers, rent control and artificial wage floors will somehow solve the root problem of affordability (i.e. real estate speculation), while embracing NIMBYism even harder in their blue suburbs. This was revealed in a 2008 study of city panel data over an 8 year period from 2000-2008 in California. The study found that cities with lower rates of new construction and housing permits and more restrictive zoning policies were highly correlated with historical population density and political leanings specifically more liberal leaning cities were found to issue fewer housing permits.