Santa Cruz, here's something most people won't say out loud.

Since the late 1970s, our local planning departments have been handed a quiet assignment: discourage building, and keep actual planning to a minimum. The layers of regulations, codes, hearings, and reviews didn't show up by accident. They were designed to make the application process slow enough and expensive enough that most developers walked away.

Until now.

One of the ironies of slow growth is the cottage industry it created. A class of highly paid land use consultants now thrives in this town. Many of them are former planners themselves. They learned the system from the inside, left, and now charge private developers to navigate the same maze they once enforced.

Credit where it's due. Santa Cruz wrote the playbook on slow growth politics. Larger coastal communities studied it and copied it. And longtime residents, myself included, have been on the receiving end of the benefits. Especially those who bought a piece of paradise three or four decades ago.

We live in one of the most desirable places in the country. Ocean views. World-class weather. Sandy beaches.

Parkland and open space wrapping the outer neighborhoods. Hundreds of miles of hiking and biking trails that conveniently double as a buffer against sprawl. From a purely selfish standpoint, why would anyone already living here want to let more people in?

There's another layer to it. The longest tenured homeowners pay the least in property taxes, thanks to Prop 13.

And in a market where demand keeps outrunning supply, prices climb. Santa Cruz real estate has appreciated more than 600% since the mid-1990s. That's not a mystery. That's policy.

The deepest irony comes when a longtime resident complains that their kids can't afford to live here. Yet the same appreciated equity, fueled by the policies they supported, helped pay for those kids' college, bought a second home, and will likely be the nest egg funding their retirement.

Slow growth wasn't an accident. It was a strategy. And it worked.

The question now isn't whether it worked. The question is who pays the price going forward.