Editorial
Community needs to face up to housing shortage
For a long time, Los Gatans have been wringing their hands and worrying that the high cost of housing would make it impossible to attract people to the town who have traditionally been important contributors to our community--teachers, police officers, firefighters, retailers and others in the service industry.
To the cost of housing, we need to add the availability of housing. Finding a place to live in the West Valley is not for the faint of heart as Pam Smith of West Palm Beach, Fla., recently learned.
Smith was to be the town's new library director. Her annual salary hovered near $90,000. She had studied the real estate market and decided that she and her husband could afford to make the move.
Then she discovered that ability to pay is only a small part of what it takes to actually be able to sign on the dotted line. What her study of housing prices didn't tell Smith was how inventive one must be to actually be chosen to pay the high price for housing.
She apparently didn't know about bidding wars; she hadn't heard that it's sometimes necessary to submit a résumé, bring fresh-baked cookies to the owner or offer a weekend at Tahoe.
Still, while everyone talks about the housing crisis, few want to do anything about it. The concept of high-density housing is about as popular here as a proposal to put a Wal-Mart on N. Santa Cruz Avenue might be.
When officials talk about the town's commitment to affordable housing, they mean requiring a developer to make one or two units in a community of single-family, detached homes below market price.
Many Los Gatans point to San Jose as a more appropriate location for high-density housing. Between the lines, what's being said is that high-density is for a different class of people. The reality is that San Jose is taking responsibility for increasing the housing inventory. Most of the communities in Santa Clara County, including Los Gatos, are not.
Already, though, the tight housing market has begun to change expectations. In today's school section, the new principal of Fisher Middle School says he's hoping to find an apartment in Los Gatos. In last week's Saratoga News, that city's newly hired city manager expressed the hope that he and his wife could find an apartment in the city where he works.
Council members in Los Gatos have pretty much said they don't expect their new city manager to be able to live in the community. They know the person they hire will be unlikely to find a home here.
It's popular these days for Los Gatans to say the character of the town is shaped by its people. If that's going to continue to be true, shouldn't we be thinking about putting roofs over the heads of these people?
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Los Gatos, California Since 1881
