SANTA CRUZ >> Santa Cruz County is in need of nearly 12,000 new affordable rental homes to meet demand, according to a report released Tuesday by the nonprofit California Housing Partnership.

The figure represents the number of homes it would take to house the county’s lowest-income families without forcing them to spend more than 30 percent of their household income on rent — a federally recognized definition for affordability.

At present, roughly 7,500 of the 19,000 lowest-income families in Santa Cruz County are housed in affordable homes, according to the report.

“I think that it both underscored what we already knew and it underscored that we were already underway to put big solutions before the community this November — and that, I think is the critical takeaway,” said Amie Fishman, executive director of the Non-profit Housing Association of Northern California, which partnered to produce the report.

Another key finding: Renters need to make more than $50 per hour to afford Santa Cruz County’s median asking rent of $2,650 per month. The median rental cost is based on a UC Berkeley analysis of Craigslist listings posted in April.

Other findings include a correlation between the statewide loss of redevelopment dollars in 2012 and a 15 percent rise in homelessness in the county from 2015 to 2017.

The report comes as the latest look at a statewide housing crisis that has driven low-income families out of the state and fueled a labor shortage for the local agricultural and service industries.

Matt Schwartz, the California Housing Partnership’s CEO, said the economic impacts of the housing crisis may be the most pragmatic concerns, but individual impacts to low-income families must also be considered from a moral perspective.

“It’s not too hard to imagine a future if we don’t dig deep and start investing more at a local and state level — in producing more affordable housing and protecting what we have — that we are going to end up in the equivalent of economic apartheid,” Schwartz said.

RECOMMENDATIONS

The California Housing Partnership made a series of statewide and local policy recommendations to combat the housing crisis, including endorsing Prop. 1, the statewide $4 billion housing bond, and Measure H, Santa Cruz County’s proposed $140 million affordable housing bond. Both measures will be decided in the November midterm election.

“Thousands of our community members are struggling with the cost of housing in Santa Cruz County and this study, once again, highlights just how many of our neighbors and friends are affected,” said Measure H co-chairman Don Lane in a statement released in response to the report.

Other local policy recommendations include expediting approval and zoning changes for 100 percent affordable housing developments and continuing to incentivize homeowners to build and rent out accessory dwelling units.

“Knowing that these are developments designed to serve community needs and achieve public policy goals, they should have flexible zoning and streamlined processes so we can get them online as quickly as possible,” said Fishman, the nonprofit director.

Titled “Santa Cruz County’s Housing Emergency and Proposed Solutions,” the report is available online at chpc.net/resources-library.

BY THE NUMBERS

Santa Cruz County

Affordable housing shortfall: 11,873.

Median rent: $2,650 per month.

Income needed to afford median rent: $8,833 per month, or $50.96 per hour.

State minimum wage: $1,907 per month, or $11 per hour.

Source: California Housing Partnership Corporation. Data reflects Santa Cruz County only.