ACCESS DENIED… In this cephalopod’s experience, social media is where only vampire squid hang out – it’s a good place for sucking the life force from other creatures. So Squid mostly avoids social media, but follows a few accounts to stay informed. Those include accounts of local politicians, who use social media to toot their own horns, but also to provide useful information.
For County Supervisor Glenn Church, his staff – primarily policy analyst Leonie Gray – post about upcoming events, like Aromas Earth Day and a meeting on Highway 183 improvements in Castroville. So Gray was surprised on March 18 to receive a notice from Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, saying Church’s Instagram account was suspended because it “doesn’t follow our Community Standards on account integrity.” Those standards require accounts avoid egregious practices like promoting crime, sexual exploitation or violent content – nothing wrong with announcing a new fee structure for North County wells, it would seem.
Gray followed the instructions to verify Church’s identity, including taking photos of him from multiple angles. But to no avail; Meta responded almost immediately to say it had disabled the account. “It seems to me like their whole review process was not run by a human,” Gray tells Squid’s colleague.
Did Instagram’s AI analysis mistake Church for an AI-generated politician? Squid (not a human) reached out to Meta to ask, but didn’t hear back from either human or robot.
PRICED OUT… One nice thing about the sea is there’s plenty of real estate, and if ever a species becomes too numerous, the food chain eventually sets things right. It’s an elegant if violent process that’s worked for millions of years, at least until humans started messing things up, something you unfortunately excel at.
But building housing, not so much – which is why Squid was long a cheerleader for the 106-unit apartment complex on upper Broadway Avenue in Seaside called Sea Grove. On Thursday, April 24 at 10am, Sea Grove is hosting a ribbon-cutting ceremony to celebrate the project (though people have been living there for weeks already), but if you were hoping to land one of the 16 below-market-rate units, too bad – they were all scooped up within 30 minutes when applications opened up last October. And a representative from Sea Grove says the market-rate units are filling up too, which Squid finds surprising given that one-bedroom apartments start at $3,796 per month. By Squid’s rough calculation, a person would need to earn at least $150,000 a year to float that.
That’s beyond Squid’s budget, but nonetheless Squid might ooze on over to take a tour – it might be catered, and in this economy, Squid’s always hunting for a free meal.
(1) comment
Regarding SeaGrove, while not currently on the website, they previously listed their smaller (~600 sf) one-bedroom units at around $3,100, still very expensive, but it is incorrect to say their one-bedroom units start at $3,796. They're also offering a 6 week rent credit on new leases, bringing the monthly rent for those $3,796 units down to $3,321 for the first year.
Yes, those prices are still high, but new construction is extremely expensive, especially in California, and even more so with local water credits at ~$10k per bathroom, and other impact fees adding five figures per unit. It’s not realistic to expect unsubsidized units to rent for anything close to what aging >50 year old buildings cost, particularly if those properties were bought decades ago and aren’t subject to inclusionary/affordability requirements.
The uncomfortable truth is that supply and demand does apply to housing, even if we wish it didn’t. For decades, many communities, particularly in coastal California, have failed to allow housing supply to meet demand, especially for workforce housing. The result is exactly what we’re seeing, skyrocketing prices, displacement, and generational inequality. Thanks to Prop 13, older homeowners have been shielded from the consequences of this shortage while often voting against the kinds of policies that would make housing more affordable for others. It’s a system that lets them have their cake and eat it too, low property taxes, rising home values, and quiet neighborhoods, while leaving younger and less affluent people fighting over crumbs.
Most of SeaGrove’s 106 units will be occupied by people who would otherwise be renting elsewhere on the Peninsula, many of them single-family homes. As those tenants move into SeaGrove, their former homes become available, helping enable downward filtering that offers more options for folks with less income. That’s not just theory, it's been thoroughly documented by economists and urban planners for decades. A recent example is Austin, Texas, where after years of building to try and catch up with demand, January rents dropped 16% year over year.
Behind those numbers are real people, nurses, teachers, service workers, carpenters, and yes, even journalists. The people who keep our communities running are constantly being priced out of the towns they serve. Without more rental options like SeaGrove providing some relief, many are forced to commute long distances just to get to work. This adds to traffic congestion, increases pollution and carbon emissions, and wastes thousands of hours of their lives on the road. Projects like this may not be perfect, but they’re one of the few tools we have to keep essential community members housed locally where they can spend more time with friends and family, enriching their communities, and less time stuck in traffic.
Compare this to most of the new housing built over the past few decades, almost entirely large, for sale single family homes aimed at wealthy Bay Area professionals and out of town retirees. Rental projects like SeaGrove do dramatically more to address our housing needs than the status quo.
Perhaps all this goes without saying, but almost every time a new housing project, especially apartments, is discussed, the conversation boils down to complaints about the size or appearance, concerns over worsening traffic or parking, or, more often than not, simply that “it’s too expensive”. This is almost always done without acknowledging the downstream benefits and only adds to the already massive stigma that virtually all economically viable rental projects face. That stigma leads to more opposition, fewer approvals, and ultimately, a worsening housing crisis, resulting in fewer places for people to live in the communities they love and higher prices for those who can least afford it.
There are valid criticisms to be made about this project, I’ve got a volume’s worth. But if we’re serious about making headway on the housing crisis, we have to stop letting perfection be the enemy of good enough. Projects like this, imperfect as they are, are one of the few ways we can make progress. We’ve seen what doing nothing gets us, and we can’t afford to keep making that mistake.
Welcome to the discussion.
Log In
Keep it Clean. Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd, racist or sexually-oriented language.
PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK.
Don't Threaten. Threats of harming another person will not be tolerated.
Be Truthful. Don't knowingly lie about anyone or anything.
Be Nice. No racism, sexism or any sort of -ism that is degrading to another person.
Be Proactive. Use the 'Report' link on each comment to let us know of abusive posts.
Share with Us. We'd love to hear eyewitness accounts, the history behind an article.