This illustration shows what neighborhoods are up against — literally — when housing projects (which we support in concept) are way too large for their location.

We are a group of Santa Cruz residents who came together earlier this year as members of “831 Responsible Development.” We are rapidly growing in numbers.

To a person, members of our group support the development of additional housing in Santa Cruz — and the development of housing on the 831 Water Street site. But we are opposed to it being done at a size and scale that overwhelms entire neighborhoods. (Please see this page for our affirmative vision for this site.)

Please take a few minutes to read about the proposed project on the city’s web site, learn more about our citizens group, and discover why we are very opposed to this particular development — as it is currently proposed.

Please also go to our How To Help page for three things you can do right away to add to our collective effort to encourage the developer to propose a project for this site that is both supportive of housing and compatible with this important area of our city. And to encourage the city to join our fight for a reasonable project if the developer can’t find his way to do the right thing.

Updates about our group’s efforts to promote a housing project at 831 Water Street we all can be proud of:

  • Please let the City Council know how you feel about the draft work done on producing Objective Standards. Read our post.
  • Please see our group’s most recent letter to the Santa Cruz City Council in advance of the Santa Cruz City Council’s “oversight” meeting on Tuesday, December 14. We need your help now!
  • Discussion at City Council meetings in November and December made it clear there is little appetite among council members for any development-fee-waiver requests this particular applicant might make for this particular proposal. It’s yet another reason for Santa Cruz residents to stay engaged re. this proposed project.
  • Our News & Updates page is the place where all of our posts can be found. (By subscribing to this site, the posts are automatically emailed to you when published.)
  • Thanks to your support, we were able to publish a series of small ads in the Santa Cruz Sentinel as a way of letting city residents know about this project — and the precedent it could have for excessively large projects in their neighborhoods. Here’s a link to the first ad.
  • If you haven’t already done so, please sign our online petition. (If you sign our petition, which we hope you do, you still should subscribe so that you get our blog updates automatically emailed to you.)
  • THANK YOU!