What do the American Beverage Association’s political action committee and the California Association of Realtors’ PAC have in common? Both of these out of town political giants can’t stand it when local Santa Cruzans move to chart their own path on public health and affordable housing policy.

After spending nearly $3 million last fall to get less than 48% of the vote in Santa Cruz against the locally-driven Sugar-Sweetened Beverage measure, the nation’s largest beverage companies are now suing the people of the city of Santa Cruz for having the nerve to care about our own health.

Similarly, the California Association of Realtors is mounting a massively expensive political attack to defeat our community’s two-year effort to forge a broad consensus measure to seriously address housing unaffordability and continue our progress to reduce street homelessness.

Our community’s work to shape our future, and resist Big Oil, Big Soda and Big Real Estate is the stuff our town is made of.

When the major oil companies threatened our coast with oil drilling, our community responded, and with great effect. Led by Sam Farr, John Laird, Dan Haifley and so many others, we banded together with other coastal communities to enact local ordinances that prohibited on-shore support facilities for off-shore oil drilling.

When three Santa Cruz City Council public health advocates worked with hundreds of community members to place a modest tax on a sugar-sweetened beverages, the American Beverage Association went nuts. After losing at the ballot box, they now want to drain the city’s funds as it defends the will of our voters.

Now comes the California Association of Realtors. Having never supported any local efforts to increase housing affordability, and having spent two years as an invited party to the community negotiations that resulted in the Workforce Affordable Housing Act, they have decided to oppose this carefully crafted and broadly supported measure.

“Why?” you might ask. The answer is clear. The California Association of Realtors is strongly opposed to any form of public investment from the sale of property to support affordable housing. They are so extreme on this that they had their paid lobbyist write a counter measure for the local ballot, which has been labeled a “political dirty trick.”

When they stood alone to announce their opposition to the community-written Workforce Affordable Housing Act, they were very clear that that their measure is not intended to do anything about housing affordability. Instead, their measure is intended to confuse voters and defeat the community’s measure.

How do we know this? Because that is exactly what they said to our local media. In doing so, the state association has blatantly overstepped, undermining the good-faith process we have been engaged in with our local Realtors to find real, community-driven solutions.

The essential point is this: if you want a healthy community, you probably do not want to turn to the American Beverage Association for health advice. If you want to see more affordable housing in Santa Cruz, likewise, you may not want to turn to the California Association of Realtors for their recommendations.

The Workforce Affordable Housing Act was written by and for community members. It’s a real solution for working people and their families that also helps prevent homelessness, making it possible to live in Santa Cruz even if you don’t make Silicon Valley big money.

Think local. Buy local. Vote local.

Shebreh Kalantari-Johnson serves as vice mayor of the city of Santa Cruz. Elaine Johnson is the executive director of the local nonprofit Housing Santa Cruz County.