California’s Growing Housing Crisis

California's efforts to fight the housing crisis are simply disappointing. The state hasn’t even come close to fulfilling its promise of providing more housing to prevent more people from living on the streets.

California needs millions of more housing to ensure everyone has a place to live, specifically those who are low income, at risk of homelessness, or currently facing homelessness. Our cities are currently defined by exclusionary policies, housing segregation, and hideously high costs. While a package of bills have been signed to fight California’s housing crisis, the policies put in place simply cannot keep up with the rapidity and severity of the issue, especially when California’s median home prices have shot past $800,000. This leaves me wondering if the housing crisis is too great to overcome?

Governor Newsom has made efforts to boost more housing production compared to other officials, but that is purely because the bar has been set so low. His campaign promised 3.5 million new homes, but only 13% have been permitted, let alone built. His goal was ambitious, yet very necessary. However, he has already had to walk back on his goal and reduce the number of homes to 2.5 million over a longer period of time. The bigger issue here is that policy change is too slow and incremental. As a result, the needs of Californians are not being met although both housing and homelessness are consistently ranked as two of the state’s top worries.

Let’s take a closer look at Los Angeles. In 2016, the people of Los Angeles overwhelmingly voted for Proposition HHH, which was a $1.2 billion bond measure through a higher property tax meant to create 10,000 new apartments for the homeless population in the next decade. Six years later, nearly all the funds have been committed and only 3,357 HHH-funded units have opened at an average cost of $596,846. At the time of the bill, Los Angeles’ homeless population was 28,000. It is now 42,000. The current mayoral candidates, Karen Bass and Rick Caruso, both agree that Proposition HHH has not lived up to its promise, and both pledge to fight homelessness in Los Angeles at full force. Their promise, however, sounds all too familiar given that we constantly witness a cycle of broken promises and unhurried change.

The fight to solve the housing crisis is so gradual partly due to the permitting process and financing, which is where Prop.HHH fails. To build affordable housing, the first step is finding land and outbidding developers who can pay more. The next step is receiving entitlements and permits, which often takes a year or more. In many cases, community opposition acts as a roadblock in receiving these permits for development because community members have strong feelings about change in their neighborhoods. As a result, project prices skyrocket because they must work to meet the needs of locals. The third step is financing. HHH was constructed to provide some financing for development, not all. This means developers then have to find other funding sources (at least four to five), which delays the process even further.

City controllers responsible for auditing HHH found that the funds provided for each project typically cover the inflated cost that comes with regulations, city rules, and other limitations. The money provided from these funds have such confined requirements, making the process of building an affordable housing project that much more difficult. While cities seem to be taking notice and working towards some change, it’s all fun and games until enough homes get built. At an affordable rate.

The current mayoral candidates face a hard task. If they want to ensure change, they will have to battle locals, unions, NIMBYs, regulators, and City Council. Many people will say they want solutions, but not when it comes to a new building in their neighborhood. How ironic? Rather than patching up these issues with band-aids, we must make realistic and affirmative decisions that get rid of restrictive policies in order to make the process of building affordable housing easier and cheaper.

There is a long journey ahead until California successfully and affordably houses all of its residents. When the state is battling staggering wealth and crying poverty, it must understand its greater responsibility to help its disadvantaged residents. It's frustrating to see how certails rules and regulations prevent positive change from occurring. The money allocated to affordable housing and homelessness should be easy to spend. It's that simple. But we have unfortunately created an insane system that only perpetuates the problem.