What is missing in a lot of the public conversation regarding homelessness is an accurate perception about who these people are and many of the root causes of homelessness. The most visible faces of homelessness tend to be those suffering from mental health problems and substance abuse, which negatively taints Read more…
So much of the housing conversation tends to focus just on affordable housing, or housing for those under a certain average median income (AMI). But after decades on inaction, to create true affordability, we need to increase supply across the board. I’ve spoken to companies that struggle to find local Read more…
Housing affordability, or lack thereof, is a major factor in the rise of homelessness throughout our region and California as a whole. The 2019 Homelessness Count showed a 12 percent increase in Los Angeles County and a 16 percent increase in the City of Los Angeles. Despite all the work Read more…
I think we need to have a genuine and courageous debate about power (in this case the real-estate companies and big business lobby in CA, versus what it would really take to make our state equitable, devoid of the hypocrisies that inform these types of conversations). Thank you for soliciting Read more…
I will only address the private sector/public engagement issue here. What I have discovered about the role we played in bringing the state, philanthropy and the non-profit sector together through the One California Program is that given the right framework, big ideas like this could have big impact. One-CA has Read more…
The critical issues facing this country at the moment has really focused my mind on what it is that we are not doing right? In the immigrant rights movement for example, we have for as long as I can remember talked about the idea of serious “intersectional”/cross sector approach to Read more…
Housing affordability and homelessness have become intractable problems because we have failed to address some of the fundamental issues that inform them: poverty, the isolation of low-income and immigrant communities, the focus on progress and infrastructure development on gateway cities, etc.On a macro scale, the widening income inequality in our Read more…
The affordable housing crisis we face today is decades in the making. It will take many years to transform our housing systems. However, action is required now to lay the infrastructure that is necessary to improve housing stability of all residents in the future.
Our joint approach should view homelessness as an emergency, much like a natural disaster. This will involve both short term and long term solutions to provide housing and services to those experiencing homelessness right now. This will fundamentally alter how we approach building new housing of all types that can Read more…
Government needs to reform planning processes that have been in place decades to serve a population in California from 50 years ago. This is a primary cause of the affordability crisis as we have simply not built the housing to accompany our population growth. Governments also need vigorously enforce housing Read more…
The reasons people cite for becoming homeless for the first time are increasingly based on economic reasons including housing affordability. In the 2019 Demographic Survey in Los Angeles, this number reached 71% up from 55% just a few years earlier. People experiencing chronic homelessness often have additional barriers to becoming Read more…
If you haven’t noticed, our climate is nice and other places are not quite so at times. Swarms of people if given their choice would choose Southern California as their home. Unfortunately, we have made it extremely expensive to buy or build a home here. Total DIF or development impact Read more…
Housing affordability has several factors that contribute to the ratio of cost to income. The laws of supply and demand state that as supply dwindles or demand increases the price of anything goes up. This happens despite short time fixes that local, state and federal agencies implement to make it Read more…
The homelessness problem is more difficult to solve than the housing shortage and affordability problem. It is also more permanent and likely to keep growing for the foreseeable future. Our booming economy cannot stem this tide, nor can a potential glut of affordable housing. Mayor Garcetti’s major efforts of the Read more…
The public conversation has been framing the affordability problem the wrong way. As usually stated, the implied need is for subsidized housing so that people can pay no more than 30% of income on rent. Yet 60% of SoCal renters are paying more than 30% of their income on rent, Read more…
The affordability problem is founded on an acute shortage of supply, which drives up rents and house prices. The public does not grasp the shortage because they don’t know why demand has grown so much. It is not from greater migration. Demand surged after 2010 the Millennials came of age Read more…
There is a false narrative that all people who find themselves homeless are mentally ill and have addiction issues. When in fact, two-thirds of the population are homeless due to trouble paying rent. I believe if we think differently about local and state budgets I think we could figure a Read more…
The fact that nearly half of the 8 million people living with past convictions in California have trouble finding housing. Most people have children and have been years removed from the justice system but still face 5,000 legal restrictions that make it difficult to find housing that affordable. As a Read more…
“People” who are considered homeless are not monolithic. While housing affordability in most cases leads to transitional homelessness and in some cases chronic homelessness, it is not a straight line.The two differ in that housing affordability is primarily ebbing and flowing with the economy while homelessness can ebb and flow Read more…
What is missing is what I’ve stressed above [in the prior question] – the idea that homelessness and housing affordability are increasingly connected. While mental health, substance abuse, and lack of support for veterans are important drivers, it’s the single parent, the student, the older folks next door, the hard-working Read more…
What’s missing is a recognition that this is a problem deeply embedded in our contemporary economy. The growing level of income inequality means that those of means can easily price others out, particularly in areas that are jobs- and amenities-rich. The growing reliance on a knowledge economy also means a Read more…
Housing affordability and homelessness are indelibly linked. Despite stepped-up efforts to get the unsheltered into either transitional or permanent housing – after the passage of Measure H to expand services, the number of individuals touched by outreach efforts tripled – the homeless count in both the City and the County Read more…
In addition to increasing efforts to provide mental health support, substance abuse treatment and other social services to those who need it, we need to focus on helping homeless individuals find jobs. Here in San Bernardino County, we are partnering with a nonprofit staffing agency to provide job coaching, placement, Read more…
Abuse of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) has exacerbated the state’s housing affordability issues by making it more difficult and more expensive for developers to bring homes to the market. In particular, the law has been used to stymie high-density and in-fill housing projects that would help ease housing Read more…
The lack of affordable housing in our coastal counties has driven many people to move to San Bernardino County in search of less expensive housing options. This eastward migration has, in turn, driven up the cost of housing for those already struggling to afford mortgages or rent in the Inland Read more…
Shelter is a basic human necessity, but far too often, we have treated having a stable home as a privilege. Our state is finally making progress, with an anti-rent gouging bill advancing out of the state legislature’s Senate Judiciary, and notable progress at the local level. This will help to Read more…
Hundreds of thousands of L.A. County residents are on the brink of homelessness – one car repair, medical visit, or rent increase away from not being able to pay their rent. In fact, an estimated 600,000 people in L.A. County spend 90% of their income on housing. A recent study Read more…
The issue of housing affordability can be tied directly to economic justice. Liberty Hill recently co-published a report entitled Priced Out, Pushed Out, Locked Out: How Permanent Tenant Protections Can Help Communities Prevent Homelessness and Displacement in LA County. This report describes how tenants across unincorporated LA County are facing Read more…
I grew in up poor in Santa Monica with my dad and younger brother. From a young age, I experienced the impact and uncertainty that housing insecurity can have on a family. Fortunately, rent control in Santa Monica helped keep rents affordable so that we could keep a roof over Read more…
As a public health and community health-minded leader in philanthropy, I doubt I have any new insights to share on the affordable housing crisis. But the civic conversation on homelessness is missing one key, critical element: our society and our region are manufacturing homeless persons faster than our ability to Read more…
This is an urgent matter and we need to look deeper at the economic conditions of the poorest among us for whom housing has become a luxury vs. a basic human right and need.
Missing is the conversation of wages and are the wages average workers earn enough to pay for housing. Are there housing assistance grants that can help individuals prevent eviction? Government at all levels need to regulate rental prices and provide clinical and health support for people who are in the Read more…
We never talk about how much what is acceptable to pay for housing. In other words we should talk about what are acceptable rents (should simple studios be $750 a month, 2 bedrooms, $1,500, 3 bedrooms $2,000) and anything above that should be justified. There are apartments in some of Read more…
Housing costs have soared while salaries have remained stagnant for years. California and several cities have sought to increase wages so people could provide for their basic needs which includes housing. Many families are living in crowded housing and in garages because they can not afford to find apartments or Read more…
In discussions on homelessness, the focus is largely on triaging the issue by providing shelter as soon as possible, which is critical and necessary. On that front, nonprofits do a lot of good work in our communities and in general, prove to be more effective with their money and resources. Read more…
A 2018 Pacific Research Institute study found that in a survey of 200 CEOs with businesses looking to expand in California, nearly nine in 10 cited the cost of housing as a significant factor in their decision-making. California’s reputation of being a difficult place to do business is not new, Read more…
While a shortage in housing aggravates the problems of both homelessness and housing affordability, there are key differences. Anyone can find themselves temporarily homeless due to economic conditions. However, data shows that for many individuals experiencing homelessness, it is a chronic problem that often comes with challenges of mental and physical Read more…
As much as we would all like to eradicate homelessness altogether, we must recognize that some portion of the homeless population will refuse all help, and direct our scarce resources to those who can most likely benefit from them. The hard truth is that we cannot force assistance on those Read more…
It strikes me that there are a couple of aspects of the homelessness problem that need more attention, one demographic and one economic. The demographics of the homeless population are complex, and people become and remain homeless for a variety of reasons, which is why there is no single “silver Read more…
There is a growing realization that California’s housing crisis is fundamentally a supply problem, but too many of the commonly proposed solutions fail to address the issues that discourage homebuilding in the state – and many would even make things worse. Soaking taxpayers with expensive housing bonds will only add Read more…
There is certainly a good deal of overlap between the housing affordability and homelessness crises, particularly here in California, because financial issues are one of the leading causes of homelessness, and housing is typically one’s greatest expenditure. But there are a number of other reasons people become homeless – including Read more…
This is the defining issues of our day, and we must meet the challenge. This issue is complex, involves multiple partners, and often takes longer than I’d like. The daily balancing act of local governments has become: how do we enforce local ordinances (littering or public nuance) to protect quality Read more…
It’s easy when addressing a crisis that is as complex as homelessness to gravitate towards safe and simplistic solutions, when in reality our response must be connected solutions that acknowledge the complexity of the issue. You might hear some say, “this is about mental health”. The truth is homelessness is Read more…
All layers of government must continue to streamline processes to reduce the costs and time to construction approvals. California’s building code is waist-high, no wonder it takes upwards of 3 years to bring a housing project to fruition. Every city should be required to build their fair share of housing Read more…
There are many complexities in the growing homeless crisis, a lack of diverse housing options is one piece and frankly a piece a city has the most influence over. This is why I have focused my efforts to date heavily on increasing the housing stock and building partnerships to reduce Read more…
Orange County business leaders have identified increasing the supply, choices and affordability of housing as a key initiative to Orange County’s long-term economic prosperity. As a result, OCBC is a leader in research, with cutting-edge data, that has assisted regional agencies like the Southern California Association of Governments, individual city Read more…
Cities are required to identify sites for homeless shelters by law. Builders must have full “by-right” authority to build, with ministerial approvals only. Homelessness is not a crime. If sufficient housing is not produced, cities will not be permitted to enforce local “no-camping” ordinances and tent cities may develop in Read more…
New housing is change for a community, and existing residents can be fearful of change as well as newcomers. But debunking the myths is important. For example: –Will my property values go down? Not one study exists that building new housing decreases existing property values; in fact, some studies actually Read more…
Housing affordability, homelessness and—add to that–demands for rent control as rents increase exponentially–are all by-products of a decades-long failure by local elected officials to plan for, and encourage builders to build enough housing supply and choices, in a variety of price ranges, for a growing population, thriving jobs market and Read more…
Significant education of local government leaders and the general community is needed to provide a common foundation to discuss the most effective ways to prevent and respond to homelessness.
I believe community members and leaders do not face the collective responsibility of every jurisdiction in providing services to prevent and respond to homelessness. It is an infrastructure requirement like water, sewers, public safety, roads and open space.
There are several things missing from the discussion. People needing subsidized housing are not failures, lazy or undeserving. They are households whose employment does not pay the level of wages required to afford market-rate housing in Southern California. What’s missing is an understanding of who needs help in affording housing, Read more…
The problems are linked: the lack of a sufficient supply of affordable housing means an otherwise tolerable disruption in family, health or finances can result in loss of permanent shelter. Once experiencing homelessness, many people use drugs to cope with negative feelings and daily conditions while others may develop mental Read more…
One under-reported aspect is the number of homeless young people who are attending college in our region – at community colleges and Cal State campuses, even the UCs. It’s remarkable to imagine how they balance classroom assignments on top of the burdens that come with living without steady housing. Having Read more…
The increase of the homeless populations in cities all across Southern California has become a crisis for taxpayers across the region. Access to public property, sidewalks, parks, trails, public centers is being denied due to legitimate safety and health concerns. This is tantamount to a taking of property from a Read more…
What is missing in the conversation regarding affordable housing is the current cost per door to build housing in California and our local city councils reluctance to approve housing. Recent reports show that affordable housing costs are on average $400,000 per unit in the Los Angeles area. In fact studies Read more…
The issues of homelessness and housing affordability intersect more than they are linked. Homelessness is an issue with many moving parts; mental health issues, drug addiction, early prison release, unemployment, lifestyle choice, and housing affordability. Of course we need to build more affordable and transitional housing that not only gets Read more…
People who are homeless have an income from government benefits, and it may be time to investigate whether anyone is exploiting homeless people to obtain those benefits, perhaps through fraud. For example, the Social Security Administration will pay Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits to a “representative payee” who can be Read more…
What’s missing is a disaggregation of the “homelessness” problem into distinct categories with unique causes. In the 1960s, California adopted the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act, which provided for the involuntary commitment and treatment of a person who is a danger to himself or herself or others or who is gravely disabled. The Read more…
The government’s role is the problem, not the solution. The effect of climate-related regulations on housing construction is the subject of a lawsuit against the California Air Resources Board by a group called The Two Hundred, a statewide coalition led by civil rights and social justice advocates. The lawsuit notes Read more…
Housing affordability is not linked to spreading problem of encampments and skid row conditions, a human tragedy fostered by the judiciary. The people living in tents and under tarps, or unconscious on the pavement surrounded by trash, needles and human waste, should be patients, not tenants, and a few should Read more…
Respect is missing. The problem won’t be solved by moralizing, and neither the YIMBYs or the NIMBYs have the answer. We need to be practical and not expect people to see their quality of life dwindle because they lack the political power to stop homeless shelters in their neighborhoods. But Read more…
Government has to play a leading role, but also non-profits. Building affordable units for the homeless needs to be taken outside of normal economic parameters. If we insist market rate developers do this, it will require massive infusions from the taxpayers. There also needs to be creative use of redundant Read more…
There are three main opportunities. One is to take advantage of the coming tsunami of redundant retail space that can be converted into all kinds of housing, from patio homes to townhouses and larger multi-family. This can be done without much new infrastructure and destroying existing middle income neighborhoods. The Read more…
To some extent homelessness is a unique problem, more tied to family and social dysfunction. But it increasingly represents part of a continuum that extends from people sharing apartments, sleeping on couches of friends and in their cars. High rents certainly contribute here, forcing more working people out in the Read more…
Dismantling the state mental hospital systems in the 1960s, then not adequately funding the community mental health which was to replace it, has led to our prisons and jails becoming the default housing for the mentally ill who cycle in and out of homelessness and incarceration. They were not designed Read more…
As a society we are paying for people to be homeless. We are paying for paramedics to attend to and transport them, we are paying for them to access our healthcare system through frequent high cost emergency room visits and hospital stays, and we are paying for their interactions with Read more…
The factors leading to increased housing costs and their effect on affordability are discussed quite a bit, as are exhortations for government to provide programs that assist people or projects to address their needs. However, there is little discussion regarding the fact that, given the wealth gap in the country Read more…
Numerous studies have linked the increase in housing costs and the decline in housing affordability to the rise in homelessness. Indeed, data indicates that, in general, homelessness has risen more in the areas in which housing is less affordable and not as much in areas where housing is more affordable. Read more…
The Building Industry Association of Southern California (BIASC) had been steadfast in its commitment to promoting the creation of new housing across all socioeconomic levels, particularly when it comes to addressing homelessness. In 1989, BIASC created HomeAid Orange County, a charitable nonprofit dedicated to providing immediate housing and support services Read more…
When it comes to the lack of affordable housing in Southern California, there’s been a failure to seriously address the crippling effect which government overregulation has on new housing construction. Most notably, policymakers have avoided making a sincere effort to reform the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Originally enacted in Read more…
Solving California’s housing crisis isn’t as simple as making it easier to build homes by eliminating red tape, reducing fees, or strategies that singularly aim to provide more homes in job-rich areas. 200,000 residential units are already entitled in Western Riverside, yet only 25,000 have been built in the last Read more…
Housing affordability and homelessness are inexorably linked, which is why a key policy priority for the Southern California Association of Nonprofit Housing (SCANPH) is to dedicate resources to understanding and addressing emerging data about the fastest-growing segment of newly homeless persons in our region: low-income people who make less than Read more…
In addition to a focus on reducing today’s on-the-street homeless, we also need to pay attention to the thousands of families living in overcrowded housing across Southern California. Families living in converted garages, garden sheds, or packed into a single bedroom present public health issues and other challenges for children. Read more…
Although the lack of housing stock and high demand for housing in SoCal is widely recognized, a lessor-known factor in the cost of increasing affordability is the high cost of building in the State of California. As we take steps to increase the development of additional housing units across the Read more…
Housing affordability is clearly a factor in today’s lack of housing for our homeless neighbors, but homelessness is much more complex than simply being about housing costs. Homelessness is also impacted by mental health, substance abuse issues, lack of available supportive services to help stabilize those on the streets, and Read more…
Society must first admit that chronic homelessness is mostly due to drug/alcohol use. Many substance users are self-medicating due to past trauma, abuse or situation. A smaller portion of the homeless population is there because they do not take prescribed medications that help mitigate their congenital mental health disorders. They Read more…
The first question to tackle is do we owe people “affordable housing?” Decades ago thousands relocated to the inland regions seeking lower cost housing. They traded a longer commute to higher paying jobs for lower housing costs. Now, the inland housing values have gone up and there is a hue Read more…
Some believe homelessness is someone living without a home. Statistically, most living on our streets are there because they are drug or alcohol addicted. Their chronic addictive lifestyle keeps them from a job, a house or even adequately taking care of themselves. Until the addicted homeless person seeks help will Read more…
What is lacking is will. Mayors and city councils must have the will to take people off the streets and send them to centers providing the minimum basics. There is nothing unconstitutional about doing so. Misplaced compassion has actually kept homeless people from services more efficiently provided in centralized locations.
There is no constitutional right to camp on a street. Police should remove people who do and take them to locations with toilet, shower, heating and cooling features, and soup kitchens. Liberal cities have been hesitant to take this action out of fear of not appearing compassionate. However, letting the Read more…
The scarcity of affordable housing is in large part due to the add-ons local governments impose on developers, supposedly for the impact the new housing has on the community, but, in many cases, just for revenue purposes. Requiring a much tighter fit between the impact fee assessed and a measure Read more…
It is a fact, though shocking, that many homeless people have jobs or are full-time students. They are living in their cars because they can’t pay for an alternative. Other people are homeless and would remain so even if there were affordable housing. The latter group include many who are Read more…
Employment. California has begun to incorporate planning for livelihood-sustaining jobs into discussions of homelessness, but it is still an afterthought in a “housing first” model. A more explicit set of initiatives are needed to combine jobs (in social enterprise), economic mobility (via education/training (in the workplace or in other settings), Read more…
While affordable housing for middle-income working people like teachers and first responders gets some attention, very little attention is paid to housing affordability/access for low wage workers – particularly those who are overcoming high barriers to return to or join the workforce (e.g. the populations served by REDF’s portfolio of Read more…
Vagrancy is evidence of either mental illness, addiction or a refusal to work. If mental illness or addiction, the government must work with nonprofits to treat people; if the latter, incarceration. Public “camping” should be considered theft of public space that deprives others of the right to use that space.
The exponential growth of homelessness in Southern California during the last decade has been driven in large part by the growing gap between rising housing costs and stagnant wages for people with low incomes in urban centers. Rising housing costs are a function of demand for market-rate housing and insufficient Read more…
Regulation and taxation are rarely discussed. I’ve seen few clearer illustrations of that one-sided debate than in the recent gubernatorial race. Gavin Newsom talked about producing more “affordable” housing through government spending and lawsuits against cities failing to do their fair share; John Cox, a home builder, underscored the high Read more…
Absolutely, they’re linked. Setting aside the mental/social problems affecting perhaps two-thirds of all homeless, we’re still left with many people for whom affordability is a problem. But affordability is often mischaracterized as a problem created by gentrification or the presence of successful corporations in which relatively high employee pay (effective Read more…