By Elizabeth Zach, RCAC staff writer

In a recent housing study, researchers say that California lawmakers need to allow for more homebuilding, particularly in the San Francisco Bay Area. In Sonoma County, the need for affordable housing is particularly acute but, some say, residents living in the mostly rural county are uneasy with more people moving to and living in the region.

According to the study produced by the Bay Area Council Economic Institute, the most effective way to make housing affordable is to build more housing.

“And it is that reality that so confounds Sonoma – a community whose hearts ache for its residents priced out of the community, yet can’t seem to muster the wherewithal to wholeheartedly support projects that might ease the burden,” writes Jason Walsh, the city editor for the Sonoma Tribune-Index, in an opinion piece.

He goes on to describe the Sonoma Planning Commission’s approval of the Gateway Project, a proposal that would include a mix of apartments, townhouses, homes and retail space.

“If there was ever a town that seems to struggle with reconciling its big-tent values with its small-town identity, it’s Sonoma,” he writes, “whose tourist-driven economy brings in equal parts prosperity and resentment. And whose desire for the next generation to build a future in Sonoma is inextricably linked to Sonoma’s future of building. For Sonoma to ever solve its housing crisis, it will be because the city dared to evolve, to grow, to change.”

To read more, go here: http://www.sonomanews.com/opinion/8397381-181/fear-and-housing-in-sonoma