What housing crisis?
A “housing crisis” has been declared for all of Sonoma County by elected officials, affordable housing advocates and by the home building and construction industry. Rents and raw building costs have never been higher. Vacancy rates for rentals are almost zero and new housing construction is years behind the actual demand, these leaders tell us.
Healdsburg 2025
Editor’s note – As we celebrate our 150th year of publishing, the Healdsburg Tribune seeks to balance a reverence for the past, a keen eye on the present and a healthy curiosity about the future. Occasionally, a forward-thinking reader sends us what we like to call “A letter from the future,” examining present-day Healdsburg from an imagined perspective of the future. Jay Beckwith submitted this thoughtful and interesting essay.
Down on the farm
Many of us who live here in Sonoma County have been wrestling with our identity the past few years. We stopped calling this place the Redwood Empire several years ago, but not all of us want to be known as wine country. By land mass, we’re still rural and agricultural. But, by many other measures we prefer to be urban and urbane, more hip and less hick. We get wowed with mentions of “Sonoma style” and “wine country lifestyle” from places like New York, Los Angeles or Paris.
Guest Commentary
Hold on to your butts — your cigarette butts, that is. Let’s face it: many smokers litter when discarding their cigarette butts. They are dropped on sidewalks, tossed out the car window, and left on beaches. A cigarette butt is so small, it is easy to feel like we’re really not littering at all. What’s a cigarette butt compared to tossing a bag of fast food wrappers into the street or pouring a can of used oil in the gutter?
