Tell Your Supervisors: PG&E Settlement Funds Should Go to Housing

Sonoma County will decide in September how to spend its $149 million PG&E settlement. Based on Sustainable Sonoma's coalition priorities, we are asking the Supervisors to use this money  to improve housing security.

We invite you to act on this opportunity to help Sonoma Valley address its housing crisis. You and/or your organization can add your voice to Sustainable Sonoma's letter. Feel free to add additional points.

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August 21, 2020

Dear Sonoma County Supervisors,

This letter expresses agreement with Sustainable Sonoma in urging you to invest a substantial portion of the PG&E settlement to increase housing security for Sonoma County residents.

When Community Foundation Sonoma County conducted over 60 interviews with a diversity of leaders after the 2017 fires, they concluded that, after the short term response effort had concluded, the greatest gap in achieving long-term community-wide resilience in Sonoma County had to do with housing security. Every crisis that has hit us since then reinforces the same need. Until Sonoma County residents and workers are able to live here while maintaining a decent standard of living, our County will not reach a stable triple bottom line. Our economy cannot be stable until employees and small business owners can afford to live near their work. Our environment cannot be stable until we reduce commuting. And our social network cannot be stable until lower income households, which include most households with parents or elders, can afford to live here. 

Too much has changed, since the 2017 fires, to use the Office of Recovery and Resiliency Framework alone, when deciding how to spend this money. Sustainable Sonoma generally concurs with the requests in the letters from Generation Housing and MapOne Sonoma. Specifically, we ask that you invest a substantial amount of the PG&E settlement to:

1. Establish a county-wide need-based rental assistance fund that includes help for undocumented households. To make the funding go farther, it should be used--at least in part--strategically to help renters and landlords negotiate terms and understand their rights and resources.

2. Invest in a housing model, such as that advanced by the Housing Land Trust of Sonoma County, that uses subsidy retention to preserve the public investment, that keeps the home affordable in perpetuity, and provides stewardship to the resident families and the land. 

Sustainable Sonoma is a forum of community leaders from a wide range of sectors across Sonoma Valley, finding solutions and taking action to address our community’s biggest challenges. Sustainable Sonoma is currently working across boundaries to increase, improve, and preserve housing that is affordable, for people who live or work in the Valley, within already developed areas, to create diverse, safe, complete neighborhoods.

Thank you sincerely for your unflagging service in these extraordinarily challenging times.
 

Caitlin Cornwall, Project Director
Sustainable Sonoma 
www.sustainablesonoma.net
(707) 322-1400

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