Cuyama Valley Housing Research

“Tree Training” photo courtesy Noé Montes

Since 2017 Blue Sky Center has been researching and reporting on the availability, quality, affordability, opportunity, and needs of/for housing in the Cuyama Valley. Links to our reports—as well as the reports of other Cuyama Valley stakeholders—are provided here.

To talk with us about housing, reach out to us by email or stop by our offices!

Why does Blue Sky Center, as an economic development organization, make work about housing?

It’s a common question. The short answer is: housing needs jobs, and jobs need housing. A longer answer is that a community’s housing stock—its quantity, variety, availability, affordability—is a basic unit of any community. Without decent, safe places to live, to call home, at a price we can afford and with options for all family types, a community will stagnate or even struggle to maintain the local economy, much less be able to expand and improve job opportunities for all.

As a rural community of 1,100 residents, community development projects of any kind have an immediate, tangible effect. In communities like the Cuyama Valley, it is not easy to isolate and zoom in to highly specific community concerns without recognizing how a change to one community arena has a direct correlative effect on another. So, even as our research attempts to focus specifically on the housing needs and opportunities of current Cuyamans, it is acknowledged that housing— availability, access, and affordability into the future, broadly—is a community-wide issue, tied directly to economic opportunity and job creation (Community Action Plan Priority C): jobs need housing, and housing needs jobs. In the same mindset, attention is simultaneously being paid to the strengthening of the Cuyama Valley’s food network (Priority B, to improve access to food and connect local producers to consumers), initiating community beautification efforts (Priority A, to improve community pride and bring in sustaining revenue from visitors), supporting the Cuyama school system (Priority D, increasing enrollment, expanding offerings, and retaining staff), and bringing broadband internet to the valley (Priority F). Surrounding and entwined in all of these priorities is also a consistent need to address limitations and precariousness within the water and sewer infrastructure (Priority E).

In the process of creating the Community Action Plan, a community-wide survey was provided to all Cuyama residents; a total of 42% of households responded to the 63-question survey, providing a breadth of information on desires and opportunities for the Cuyama Valley as self-reported by Cuyama residents. One of the community priorities identified by residents and included in the Cuyama Valley Community Action Plan focused on housing affordability and availability (Priority G from that report). Given that approximately 1-in-4 working Cuyamans labor in agriculture, a focus of further study logically became housing needs, barriers, and opportunities specific to the farmworker population currently living in the Cuyama Valley.

Any development of new housing options (or improvement of existing housing units) should honor the existing nature of the Cuyama Valley, including its geography, rural attributes, culture, relative distance from urbanized political centers, and the values of Cuyama Valley residents themselves. Supporting access to safe, decent, and affordable housing (be it new units or existing ones) would benefit Cuyama as a whole—supporting economic development—while also benefiting Cuyamans as individuals and households—providing housing security and supporting families with school-age children. Investments from outside resources should be sure to support the Cuyama Valley’s current residents while also purposeful to maintain Cuyama’s quality of life, which is highlighted by Cuyamans in the community survey as being quiet, rural, and affordable, supported by a small and tight-knit local population.

Partners in Our Housing Work