Home > Resource Center > In the News Home > Greenbelt Alliance in the News

Greenbelt Alliance In the News

November 7, 2005

REPORT DETAILS LACK OF AFFORDABLE HOUSING IN SOLANO

"Through the Roof: Solano County's Housing Crisis'' said workers and residents in one of the Bay Area's fastest growing counties cannot afford even median priced homes.

The report was released by the Solano Housing Coalition, Greenbelt Alliance and the Non-Profit Housing Association of Northern California.

The report said the California Association of Realtors found that 80 percent of Solano County residents in January 2005 could not afford to buy the median-priced house of $389,000. That median price increased to $481,000 by September 2005, the report said.

The report also said a Consumers Reports study rated the Fairfield-Vallejo housing market the ninth most over-priced market in the country and the second most over-priced market in the Bay Area based on the difference between families incomes and local home prices.

The average family would have to earn 51 percent more to afford the average Solano County home, according to the report.

Solano County cities built 275 percent of the market rate houses needed between 1999 and 2003, but only 34 percent of the homes needed by families earning the median income of $73,900 and less, according to the report.

Building inclusionary housing could substantially increase the supply of affordable housing, but between 1999 and 2003, only half of the needed affordable housing was built in Fairfield, Vallejo and Vacaville, the report states.

With inclusionary housing policies requiring 20 percent of new homes to be affordable, those cities would have met 91 percent of the need, according to the report.

The report repeats the lament being heard throughout the Bay Area -that public employees are unable to find affordable homes in the counties where they work.

"As a result, people are moving out of Solano and commuting in to their jobs,'' said Art Grubel, a member of the Solano Housing Coalition and the executive director of the Service Employees International Union, Local 1280.

"Solano's housing crisis is increasing the pressure to pave the greenbelt. To protect farms and natural areas, we have to build affordable homes within our cities,'' said Tom Steinbach, executive director of Greenbelt Alliance.

The Solano County General Plan's Housing Element calls for an emphasis on low, moderate and very low-income housing. It states that the county's Orderly Growth Initiative limits residential development in the unincorporated county and calls on Fairfield, Vacaville and Rio Vista to develop housing in city limits.

The Housing Element also calls for "smart growth'' such as locating potential housing along existing corridors and encouraging infill development.

###