Monterey County Local News: Housing

Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren has announced that the Community Housing Improvement Systems and Planning Association will receive $1.32 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture through a combination of a grant and a low-cost federal loan to rehabilitate affordable housing for farmworkers in Soledad.

Increasingly, the housing crisis has become a major political issue in California, and nowhere is that more true than the city of Monterey, where about two-thirds of the residents are renters and where the economy is driven by the hospitality industry, which is staffed by employees that often travel from afar to get to work.

On Oct. 2, about a year-and-a-half after the Pajaro River levee failed, flood agencies broke ground on the long-awaited Pajaro River Flood Risk Management Project. The five-year, $599 million project sets out to protect the river valley and its tributaries from 100-year storms, by constructing stronger levees and working on improvements to the area.

EAH Housing, a nonprofit housing development and management organization, has announced that construction is underway at Greenfield Commons, with the last modular stack for Greenfield Commons Phase I recently completed.

The imbalance between housing supply and demand is a key challenge to economic growth in Monterey County, according to a new report that makes clear the need for increasing housing supply.

Two allegations against Pacifica Senior Living for attempting to evict 96-year-old Jean Jacques from a Pacific Grove facility in August have been substantiated by the California Department of Social Services, according to a letter sent on Oct. 16.

The future of workforce housing on the Central Coast may well look like a three-bedroom, two-bath house tucked away on a lot at 1045 Cass St. in Monterey.

It was an extensive collaboration that enabled Salinas to open the first state-subsidized Homekey project in Monterey County in December 2020, initially housing over 60 people who either had no homes or were on the brink of homelessness.

Celia Jiménez here, thinking about Terracina at The Dunes, a 142-apartment affordable housing community right off Highway 1 in Marina. It’s a project I’ve seen from start to finish while driving on Imjin Parkway, and I’ve reported extensively about it.

County of Monterey Vacation Rentals Ordinances, which regulate vacation rental operations in inland unincorporated Monterey County, will take effect Oct. 14.

A now-vacant 94-year-old hospital building and a row of 12 occupied cottage apartments within unincorporated Carmel just off Highway 1 could become the site of Monterey County’s first “builder’s remedy” housing development, with construction of at least 127 units of very low-, low – and moderate-income apartments and townhomes.

Talk of the Bay host Len Beyea leads a discussion about housing affordability and, in particular, the rent control initiative on California's November ballot, Proposition 33.