Now is the time to get involved and help craft the housing future of Monterey County.

Pam Marino here. While many of you are excited about Sunday’s culmination of the latest football season, the Super Bowl, I’m excited about what I call “Housing Season.” In truth it’s more of a year—the year that Monterey County’s government, and that of every city within the county, are required by state law to update and approve their housing plans, called housing elements, by Dec. 15, 2023.

Why get excited about a bureaucratic process? Because this one has the potential to bring at least some much-needed housing to the region for those in the middle to lower end of the economic scale. 

Mind you, the journey to housing actually getting built will have all the time outs, huddling and delays of the last quarter of an incredibly close football game. It’ll feel like it’s taking forever. There will be big obstacles to overcome like water and neighborhood pushback.

I would argue that compared to past “housing seasons,” this time there is a real ball in play, and the state of California stands ready as both referee and commissioner to make sure cities and counties abide by the rules—with all the power of a referee or commissioner to exact penalties and fines.

In the past, the state has not done a good job of creating the opportunities for more housing to be built. So now it is cracking down: This time, cities and counties can’t just give lip service to writing down their housing elements, but have to actually create meaningful documents that will enable developers to move forward with building plans. (I wrote an explainer about this last September.) 

As part of the process of creating those housing elements, jurisdictions are required to seek out and encourage as much public input as possible, which is why you may have noticed your city or the county announcing housing town halls and pushing out surveys. One such survey from Monterey County is available now through this Sunday, Feb. 12.

Before you take it, consider watching a replay of a housing meeting that Monterey County held over Zoom on Jan. 26 in English and Spanish, regarding housing for unincorporated areas of the county. It was one of the better ones I have seen, explaining the housing element process in clear, accessible language. (You can watch the meeting in English here; the Spanish translation is here.) 

You don’t have to watch the meeting to fill out the survey, however. It only takes a few minutes and it’s your chance to tell planners and elected leaders what you think needs to be done about adding more housing to the region. You can find links to the survey in English and Spanish here.

The housing Super Bowl—when developers finally start adding more units that alleviate the current crisis—is still a ways off. But as housing elements are developed over the next 10 months, we as citizens have an opportunity to get in the game.