Invest in Real Housing Solutions, Not False Utopias

This November, Solano County voters will weigh in on the corporate-driven, dystopian ballot initiative called the East Solano Plan, formally known as California Forever. They should reject it. We need real housing solutions for Bay Area residents, not another land grab.

California Forever is not a new idea. From company towns to the creation of a “company region,” corporate interests have increasingly played a more direct role in Bay Area land use, housing, and transportation decisions. This has included corporations like Google hiring large teams of planning staff to influence local housing policy, and Facebook driving discussions over regional transportation investments and ballot measures.

For too long, corporate lobbying organizations such as the Bay Area Council and the Silicon Valley Leadership Group have played an outsized role in determining the future of our region. They have pushed their own interests while sidelining our communities’ top priorities: addressing homelessness, protecting tenants, and investing in permanently affordable housing.

California Forever is threatening to deepen housing inequities in communities like South Vallejo, where the Vallejo Housing Justice Coalition organizes. Home to the largest percentage of Black residents in Solano County, South Vallejo has some of the region’s worst housing outcomes: nearly half of residents are paying more than they can afford on housing, and landlord negligence and harassment is rampant.

A lack of basic tenant protections only exacerbates these troubling realities – and news of a new tech city is fueling profit-driven speculation, making an already unaffordable housing market even more expensive.

Solano County is significantly under-resourced compared to the rest of the region, according to data analysis by United Way Bay Area. Residents receive just $168 per capita in philanthropic funding for health, housing, food, social services, and other community needs, as compared with $11,211 per person in San Francisco. Notably, California Forever has already squandered over $2,200 per Solano resident. Recent announcements of paltry donations to cash-strapped local nonprofits should not fool anyone.

They are spending billions to build this false utopia, when what we need is investment in real housing solutions: permanently affordable, community-owned housing and robust tenant protections including rent control, just cause for evictions, and tenant anti-harassment ordinances. These are tried-and-true strategies that many other cities have adopted and that we are pursuing in South Vallejo and beyond.

California Forever CEO Jan Sramek boasts that a lot of great cities are built by companies, but we know that great cities are actually built by community investment, planning with robust stakeholder input, and trust. Let’s all come together to reject California Forever’s elitist plan and instead support real housing solutions in Solano County and throughout the Bay Area.