A Lack of Housing & Too Many Narrow Minds in San Diego
The debate about California’s lack of housing is never-ending. How did we get here? Who’s fault is it? Will increasing the housing stock increase affordability? When will we start to see results? Where are the homeless humans living on our streets supposed to go?
Answering these questions and others isn’t simple, although there are plenty of people out there devoid of facts and brimming with miracle solutions. Hardly a week goes by without Union-Tribune’s letters to the editor including some Keep It Simple and Stupid post from a misinformed citizen.
Today, I’d like to address a couple of those issues getting raised regularly in the hope that a little history will make the conversations more inclusive of reality.
First of all, there is a lot of effort being expended by many segments of society in the quest of putting more roofs over people’s heads. It’s not enough and we need to do more. This is an ‘all hands on deck’ situation.
Think beyond the homeless population for a moment and take in the reality those with housing are living through.
Here’s the fact, Jack. The number of homeless people is almost certain to increase. (And, no, they’re not coming for the weather or welfare benefits.)
The U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey 2021 5-Year Estimates, released at the end of 2022 provide a picture that cannot and should not be ignored.
From NBC 7 San Diego:
Last year, more than half of all renters in San Diego County, more than 260,000 people, said goodbye to one-third of their salaries just to cover rent alone. And nearly one in three renters spent more than half on rent.
And the problem isn’t limited to renters.
According to the same census survey, more than 30% of all homeowners in San Diego County spend more than 30% of their money on their mortgage every month. More than 13% of homeowners spend more than half of theirs to stay in their homes.
What this means in real life for a substantial part of the population is that even one financial crisis is capable of putting families on the street. That’s a big part of the reason why the number of unhoused people keeps rising every month.
The 2023 point-in-time count is slated for later this week, and ebbing COVID awareness will likely contribute to a more comprehensive count.
There is some not-bad news, namely that the overall rate of rent increases in San Diego slowed in 2022 to 6% vs 20% a year ago. The rental market is even showing some incremental month-to-month declines. But wages still aren’t keeping up.
From Times of San Diego:
Rents jumped dramatically in 2021, squeezing budgets for renters when leases expired and their units were up for renewal, said a spokesperson for Zillow. “The rental market is cooling now, but rents aren’t falling enough to make much of a dent on affordability.”
While rents have gone through the roof, so to speak, wages have lagged, the spokesperson said. Rents in the San Diego metro have grown 50% over the past five years. But the average wage only grew 27%.
In one of the aforementioned letters to the editor at the UT this weekend, the writer asked “Why do we no longer have a real public housing program?”
The short answer to that question is: Racism.
California has a constitutional amendment, passed by voters following an openly racist campaign by real estate interests requiring a ballot measure approved by voters prior to any construction of public housing. It was adopted soon after the federal Housing Act of 1949, which outlawed racial segregation in public housing and alarmed many white communities.
The Los Angeles Times:
In response, the California Real Estate Assn., the forerunner of today’s California Assn. of Realtors, put forward a ballot initiative to amend the Constitution to require a public vote before such housing could be built. The campaign argued that voters should get a say because public housing creates taxpayer debts. The effort also relied heavily on anti-communist and segregationist messaging.
Newspaper ads paid for by the Realtors blamed “minority pressure groups” for pushing public housing. At the time, the Realtors’ Code of Ethics included a provision barring agents from integrating neighborhoods on the basis of “race or nationality” if doing so would be “clearly detrimental to property values.”
There have been three previous attempts to repeal Article 34, all of which failed because opponents painted its abolishment as an attack on local control.
From The Grio:(emphasis mine)
Meanwhile, over the years cities and counties have discovered legal ways to get around Article 34, including through ballot measures such as the ones proposed in Oakland, Berkeley and South San Francisco. The primary tactic is for local governments to request the construction of a particular number of affordable housing units without having to identify the developments or their locations. Also, Article 34 does not apply to publicly supported projects if less than 49% of the units are affordable.
However, according to state officials, it can cost an additional $10,000 to $80,000 to build an affordable unit to ensure developments don’t break the rules. Occasionally, the extra expense and uncertainty play a role in projects failing to take off.
Opponents of the local measures — including citizens and taxpayers groups — claim that they will result in the misuse of public funds. The Alameda County Taxpayer Association, for instance, called the Oakland initiative an attempt “to make the voters believe that something good would actually result, rather than more waste and misuse,” according to the East Bay Times.
There’s some more good news here, namely that the California legislature has placed a ballot measure on the 2024 ballot repealing Article 34.
The California Association of Realtors –a descendant of advocates for the law– has pledged its support. The LA Times quoted Sanjay Wagle, senior vice president of government affairs for the organization, saying Realtors recognize their role in the creation of Article 34 and are eager to help repeal it.
Here in San Diego, the one federal program offering housing assistance for low income families was hampered by artificial restrictions preventing the use of Section 8 vouchers in non-low income neighborhoods.
Following a protracted legal battle brought by the San Diego NAACP and the San Diego Tenant Union, the San Diego Housing Commission has raised the value of Section 8 housing vouchers throughout the city.
Earlier this month, Superior Court Judge Kenneth Medel ordered the Housing Commission to pay more than $1 million in attorneys fees to lawyers who filed the lawsuit and nearly $600,000 of the commission's legal fees as well.
The Housing Commission denies that the lawsuit has anything to do with its decision to bring the local voucher program in line with 2015 Obama administration directive addressing rising segregation in large American cities, including San Diego.
In an August 2017 interview with the San Diego Union-Tribune, former commission president, Richard Gentry categorized the Obama-era directive as "nothing more than social engineering."
Cough, cough.
The same people who are campaigning against real history being taught in schools and for banning books will be out in 2024 making convoluted arguments as to why their opposition to repealing Article 34 isn’t racist.
Racism continues to be a stumbling block in the quest for building more housing. Typically it’s gussied up with rhetoric about the possibility of declining property values, and in some instances even ye olde saw about Black people and crime.
In arguments against densification in already established urban neighborhoods, the blame is easier for opponents to assign, with “greedy developers” becoming the front for bad guys.
Trust me on this: greedy developers are just about the only ones building housing on any scale, because most other interested parties are not capable of navigating the bureaucracy which is rigged against affordable housing. It’s a vicious circle designed to defeat innovation. And the people complaining about greed like it that way.
Article 34 is just one of those impediments.
Repealing Article 34 in 2024 won’t magically create housing, just as legislative victories like Senate Bills 9 & 10 haven’t solved the problem. It took years to get here in terms of the housing crisis and there are pieces of the puzzle that are beyond state and local control, like wages and inflation.
In the meantime, what can be done about all the people living on the street?
Things are getting ugly out there as the entitled scorn the less fortunate. A memorial service for a homeless man who died on the street after being booted out of a hospital this past weekend turned into a confrontation, with advocates being threatened and cursed by unknown persons.
The hostility toward unhoused citizens continues to mount, especially as people who ought to know better repeat discredited claims about mental health and addiction. Since we as a society have chosen not to make healthcare available to people with those issues, every treatment program is no more than a bandaid.
If there are X number of people looking for housing and X minus (pick a number) of residences, where are people supposed to go?
Many local governments have chosen to play whack-a-mole with the homeless on the street, with police arresting them for minor crimes which are ultimately not prosecuted. It looks good for angry residents, who see police rounding up unmentionables, and is a source of overtime for the boys in blue.
There aren’t enough safe shelter spaces, and not enough capability to serve larger numbers of people by the non-profits currently doing the lord’s work.
So I’ll repeat what I’ve said before in a variety of ways: vigilantism, both sanctioned and sanctioned, is coming faster than people realize. The MAGA mentality that offers no empathy and sees cruelty as the point of their politics exists in California and elsewhere. It’s an election threat and a civil disturbance possibility.
Both short term and longer term solutions need to be on the front burner. And a good place to start is with countering the misinformation currently circulating in society.
Email me at WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com
Lead image: slworking2 @ flickr