Sonoma County was recently named the country’s tenth-least affordable place to live by Forbes, and the latest wildfires in that area have made housing prospects for its working-class residents more dim.
Raissa de la Rosa, economic development manager for the City of Santa Rosa, told CityLab that before the wildfires ruined thousands of homes, Sonoma's housing inventory was down to only about 2 percent of available stock. Currently, median monthly rent in Sonoma County rose 35 percent to $3,224, due to new demand from displaced residents; the city of Santa Rosa has capped rent increases to combat price gouging.
A person earning an average wage in the county would have to spend about 82 percent of it to live in a median-priced house. To make ends meet, many low-income families share housing, with sometimes as many as 20 people to a home, Guzman said. The median monthly rent in September was $2,366 (according to Zillow) ...
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