The real estate market is finally beginning to turn around. Across the country, homes are being built again. Shares of the big home builders on the NYSE are rising and activity is growing. Renee Kuntz of Intero Real Estate in Hollister declared recently on Facebook, the market has bottomed out. While San Benito County may still be sluggish, Silicon Valley residential housing is booming. It’s just a matter of time before the wave again reaches San Benito County.
The huge bubble of Baby Boomers is aging and many are beginning to think about retirement and where to live and enjoy their golden years. “Active adult communities” are one of the options that have gained tremendous popularity over the past few decades, especially in areas where the climate is good. The communities are typically nicely landscaped and well-manicured gated communities with single story townhomes, gorgeous community centers with golf courses, tennis courts, swimming pools and so on. They are full of “youngsters” over 55 with lots of energy, experience, skills and some wealth and to have a good time, they typically shop, eat, play, volunteer and invest in the local community. They don’t put kids in schools and aren’t much of a law enforcement problem which means they will not cost the community much.
Unfortunately, despite our great climate, if baby boomers currently living in San Benito County like me want that kind of retirement, they need to uproot and move out of the county because there is nothing like it here…. yet.
Pulte (Del Webb), K&B Homes, Shea Homes (Trilogy), Lennar (Heritage), Hovnanian (Four Seasons), Toll Brothers and others, know there is a rapidly growing demand for active senior housing. These experienced builders plan years ahead and undoubtedly are already considering dozens of potential sites up and down the State. Unfortunately, based on our history, San Benito County is probably seen as hostile toward this kind of development and therefore is very low on their radar screen.
I think it’s time we get our act together and roll out the red carpet.
Why???
1. Jobs, jobs, jobs! Building a couple of good sized active adult communities could add 1-2000 home units and means literally thousands of direct and indirect JOBS! In San Benito County!!!!
2. Unlike EDC’s mission impossible which remains linked to a difficult economy, we don’t need to convince these builders to build. That’s a given, they are going to build…. We just need to convince them to build here instead of someplace else.
3. San Benito County has an appealingly beautiful and clean climate.
4. San Benito County has location… an hour or less away from arts & culture, shopping and fine dining in Silicon Valley or Monterey as well as countless beautiful golf courses and wine regions.
5. San Benito County has lots of uncongested space.
6. The proposed Gavilan College and high school properties on Airline Highway near Fairview would be perfect locations. Residents from here would need to go thru Hollister to get to Gilroy and beyond, which means many of them would simply stop and drop their dollars here.
7. Revitalize downtown Hollister with retail and restaurant revenue.
8. Reenergize city and county budgets with increased tax revenues.
9. Revitalize our medical community and Hazel Hawkins with sufficient demographic demand to justify attracting, retaining and growing needed specialty services.
10. Provide a new source of skilled and experienced volunteers for civic organizations, nonprofits and countless other community endeavors.
11. My wife and I love it here and, yes, this is self-serving, but it would probably enable us to stay and retire here!
12. I could go on but I’m sure you get the picture!
How do we make it happen? If jobs and community vitality are priorities, we can’t approach this like business as usual. Passively waiting for opportunity to knock on our door is not leadership. We need to roll out the red carpet ASAP. Our planning process needs to be streamlined wherever possible, financial hurdles need to be cut or eliminated and we need a good team to aggressively go knock on the builders doors. We need to seriously incentivize the desired behavior. Yes, that means we need to sacrifice some permit and impact fees and whatever else may be appropriate, but I see it as an investment which could reap huge community rewards in the not too distant future.
The only real question is…. do we have the will and leadership?