• Menu
  • Skip to right header navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Before Header

Donate

UC_iST_1c_Blue

Inquiry with impact

  • About
    • About Us
    • What is Social Transformation?
    • Meet the Team
    • Faculty Support
    • Impact Report
    • Partners
    • Help Us Grow
    • Contact Us
  • Research Initiatives
    • Current Initiatives
    • Past Initiatives
  • Funding Opportunities
    • Faculty Research
      • Catalyze Awards
      • Emerging Scholar Manuscript Workshops
      • Current Fellows
    • Experiential Learning
      • Building Belonging Program
      • — Building Belonging Projects and Fellows
      • Transforming Futures Program
      • — Transforming Futures Interns
  • Publications
    • Publications
    • Better World Books
    • Resource Guides
      • Voting Resources
      • Anti-racism and Criminal Justice Reform
      • Immigrant Rights and Immigration Reform
    • Video Library
    • Audio Library
    • Q&A with Changemakers
    • Journal of International Society and Culture
    • COVID-19 Response
  • News & Events
    • Featured News
    • Upcoming Events
    • — Past Events
    • — Past Conferences
  • About
    • About Us
    • What is Social Transformation?
    • Meet the Team
    • Faculty Support
    • Impact Report
    • Partners
    • Help Us Grow
    • Contact Us
  • Research Initiatives
    • Current Initiatives
    • Past Initiatives
  • Funding Opportunities
    • Faculty Research
      • Catalyze Awards
      • Emerging Scholar Manuscript Workshops
      • Current Fellows
    • Experiential Learning
      • Building Belonging Program
      • — Building Belonging Projects and Fellows
      • Transforming Futures Program
      • — Transforming Futures Interns
  • Publications
    • Publications
    • Better World Books
    • Resource Guides
      • Voting Resources
      • Anti-racism and Criminal Justice Reform
      • Immigrant Rights and Immigration Reform
    • Video Library
    • Audio Library
    • Q&A with Changemakers
    • Journal of International Society and Culture
    • COVID-19 Response
  • News & Events
    • Featured News
    • Upcoming Events
    • — Past Events
    • — Past Conferences

Mobile Menu

Donate
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • YouTube

Solidarity Economics Series: Housing in the Monterey Bay Area

Co-authored by Gabriella Alvarez (UCSC) and Chris Benner (UCSC)

July 2023

Solidarity Economics Series on Housing

The Institute for Social Transformation is launching a new series on how Solidarity Economics principles of mutuality and movements can be applied to help promote inclusive economic development in the Monterey Bay Region. Each report highlights the ways that our current status quo of inequality undermines our economic prosperity, explaining why this is not inevitable, and how we could build a more robust economy for all.

Housing is a central part of our economy.

The combination of residential construction and spending on housing costs accounts for 15-18% of our total economic output (NAHB). The shortage of affordable housing costs our economy in the U.S. about $2 trillion a year, in lost time, wages and productivity, as people can’t move to locations with better and more productive jobs (Hsieh and Moretti 2019).

Furthermore, the types, location and cost of housing fundamentally shapes people’s access to jobs, education, food, essential public services, and the health and safety of communities. 

Housing costs are the largest single expenditure of most households.  It is also the primary means of wealth accumulation.

Our current system is highly unequal as well, rooted in historical racism, and continues to undermine the upward mobility of the most impoverished low-income and residents of color.

Solutions to housing should start from a principle of the need for opportunity for all, recognizing that this will require substantially expanding social housing—permanently affordable housing insulated form market pressures.

Click below to download the report in English or Spanish:

Solidarity Economics Series: Housing in the Monterey Bay (English)Download
Economía Solidaria: Vivienda en el Área de la Bahía de Monterrey (Spanish)Download

Thank you to the James Irvine Foundation for financial support.

For more information on Solidarity Economics, please see: https://transform.ucsc.edu/work/solidarity-economics-projects


Category: Publications

You May Also Be Interested In:

Solidarity Economics Report Header (2)

Solidarity Economics Series: Childcare in the Monterey Bay

_RG_4091

The Power Line: Strengthening Academic-Community Partnerships for Change

Screenshot

Let Them Eat Big Macs, Crunchwraps, and Whoppers: A Working Paper Describing the Local Impact of California’s $20 Fast Food Minimum Wage in the City of Santa Cruz

PXL_20240926_001400018.MP

Student Testimonials from the Transforming Futures 2024 Program

A Foundation for Change Report cover

A Foundation for Change: Understanding African American Community Conditions in Monterey and San Benito Counties

cropped-image (17)

Kinship by Coincidence: Episodes of arrival in travesti and transfeminine migration across Amazonian Peru

carmen-rojas-headshot-500x

Redefining philanthropy: Alumna Carmen Rojas drives change

Screenshot 2024-11-22 at 10.32.03 AM

Inventory of Community-Engaged Scholarship at UC Santa Cruz

Election series Banner (3)

2024 U.S. Elections Forum Series

Previous Post: «Higher Edcation's Labor Upsurge Higher Education’s Labor Upsurge
Next Post: Critical Campus Sustainabilities: Bridging Social Justice and the Environment in Higher Education Critical Campus Sustainabilities book cover»

Footer

Hex_iST_orange (1)
  • Facebook
  • Flickr
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • YouTube

Contact

Institute for Social Transformation
Division of Social Sciences
1156 High St.
Santa Cruz, CA 95064
email: transform@ucsc.edu

Resources

Anti-Racism
Immigration Reform
Faculty Resources

Newsletter

Sign up to receive the newsletter.

Site Footer

soc_sci_white
  • Accreditation
  • Non-Discrimination Policy
  • Land Acknowledgement
  • Privacy Policy & Terms of Use
  • Sexual Violence Prevention & Response

Copyright © 2025 UCSC Institute for Social Transformation · All Rights Reserved