Ojai's Affordable Housing Woes with Michelaina Johnson

Michelaina Johnson, a Ph.D candidate in the Environmental Studies program at UC Santa Cruz, spent a year researching the lack of affordable housing in Ojai and possible solutions. The results of that research were published in a highly readable account in the Fall issue of Ojai Quarterly.  Johnson has deep roots in the community, going back generations, and she was hearing from her many local friends about their struggles to find housing in Ojai, a struggle made more difficult by the pandemic. In her thorough story, she asks local leaders and citizens about the problem and what to do about it. More affordable housing can solve several problems at once - traffic, air quality and equality of opportunity.  We talk about the "trick or treat test" for neighborhoods - are they safe, well-lit, compact, neighbors knowing each other,  an abundance of young children. Michelaina said the key question in her story was "what kind of community do we want to have?" The question takes on even greater importance because of the influx of city-dwellers moving to Ojai to get away from the urban stresses.  Her Ph.D program has brought her into close study of land and water use, and the role of government in those key issues. She has also studied the issues of climate change — which is evidenced by the proliferation of wildfires in California and the increasing scarcity of water. Despite it all, she intends to maintain "a very intimate connection to Ojai." We did not talk about Hannibal's use of war elephants, the novels of Michael Ondaatje or the final episode of "Bojack Horseman."