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…
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 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…
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 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…
“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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…