Bill Lynch: My little town wall

The wall built around my little town 20 years ago by its mostly well-off, adequately housed residents, is scheduled to come down in December of 2020, unless of course our local representatives decide to leave it up.

The wall, or as we like to call it, the Urban Growth Boundary, has been effective in slowing down growth.

I’d like to believe that it was not intended, as Trump’s wall is, to keep out people of color and the poor, the “…huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” but rather to preserve the lovely community in which we are most fortunate to live.

Letting too many people in would surely ruin what we hold so dear.

I’ve been thinking a lot about that decision recently. I understand why it was done and why a group of local residents is organizing an effort keep it in place for at least another 20 years, and preferably 30.

I’m not unsympathetic. I was born and raised here, attended local public schools, and except for college and the U.S. Navy, spent my whole life here. Dottie and I raised our four children here. I love our Valley of the Moon.

But there’s the thing. Perhaps our children love it too. But they can’t come home. They can’t afford to.

A strong majority of Sonomans voted for the wall 20 years ago to stop growth. They didn’t want suburban sprawl and the ugly outside world to intrude and change the character of the community we all love.

It didn’t actually work as intended. The growth certainly slowed, but the character has been changed forever.

My little town is no longer a place where the majority of people who manage our stores, pump our gas, teach our kids, respond to emergencies, cut our hair and bandage our wounds can afford to live.

Heck, I couldn’t afford to live in my neighborhood if I hadn’t bought the house more than 40 years ago.

Did the wall cause housing prices to skyrocket? Probably not all by itself, but the fact is that if you make a necessity like housing scarce, the cost of what’s left is going to go up.

I understand that if we build enough housing that is affordable, we may cause growth, which could ruin most of what we love about our community.

Recently, as I was pondering the issue, I had a conversation with a young man who was moving out of state. He didn’t really want to leave, but felt he had to because he can’t afford to live here.

I know a young married couple with children who was renting a single family home here, but now they must move because it has been sold. They both have good jobs in town. Still, they are having a hard time finding a place here that they can afford. They may have to move to another town and commute in.

I’ve heard that some local business owners are downsizing or closing because they can’t find workers who can afford to live here.

In the comfort of this safe little hometown bubble we’ve voted for ourselves, it is easy to pretend that we are unaware of these inequities. It’s easy to believe that those who can’t live where we do can find a place somewhere else. We can try to believe it’s not our problem.

But, I think it is.

We can do better than those who believe that building walls is the only solution.

I hope that we try, before we let our wall stand for another 20 or 30 years.