There’s a growing sense of optimism that more housing can get built.

Pam Marino here, feeling a little more optimistic on the housing front after having spent a couple of months talking to people determined to make a dent in the crisis. You can read all about it in this week’s cover story, “Mission Attainable.”

I got started on reporting the story after hearing developer Sibley Simon in September at a Salinas City Council meeting talk about the project he’s working on there, a 100-percent affordable housing apartment building, more than 75 units, on East Market Street.

Simon is the founder of New Way Homes, a nonprofit with a private fund that anyone can invest in, designed to provide money to build low-income housing developments. The goal is to build affordable housing without the use of government subsidies. Intrigued by the concept and impressed with Simon’s extensive knowledge about building affordable homes, I wanted to dig into the topic for what became this week’s cover story. 

Serendipitously, November was unofficially declared “housing month” in Monterey County, with several workshops and forums focused entirely on ideas to build more housing, especially housing considered as affordable by design for those in the middle class. 

The Monterey Attainable Housing Forum was one such gathering, held over two days at Asilomar Conference Grounds, hosted by Regenerative California. I wasn’t able to attend, but I watched a live debrief session in early December, and could tell that the more than 60 people who participated—including policy-makers, developers, investors and others—were energized by the goals they had set for tackling the lack of housing locally.

At the forum they agreed to the audacious goal of facilitating the building of 3,000 homes within five years, mostly workforce and infill housing that they call “attainable” for many in the middle class. To cement that goal, three committees created at the forum are now engaged in 90-day sprints to figure out how to make it a reality. The committees are focused on finding land, finding money and seeking reform of permitting processes and fees among cities and the county.

Will they be successful? It’s too early to tell, but those who attended say they feel optimistic that after years of hearing “no” to getting projects built, they might just be able to break through to “yes.”

While the story focused on people such as Simon and those working with Regenerative California, there are ongoing efforts by others locally who are making headway in smoothing the path toward building much-needed housing. I look forward to reporting on those efforts in the near future.

I hope you’ll take the time to read the story and contemplate a future with more affordable and attainable housing in Monterey County.