Davis, CA – Yesterday’s column made the point that the city of Davis has not done nearly enough to address its fiscal problems.
I agree with those who oppose Measure Q for example, that the city council has failed to take enough measures to secure a more fiscally responsible approach to local governance.
I also go a step further and argue that the city council has also failed to develop internal revenue sources through retail and economic development – and we can see that shortcoming in the fact that the same basic sales tax measure in Davis will generate only 55% of the revenue that the one in West Sacramento would.
But I would go further than that, and argue that the city council has failed to address what most people in this community – myself included – consider the top problem – housing.
In previous columns, I have laid out the case that the city has punted the controversial issues of housing down the road – whether it is moving current housing proposals to 2025 and 2026 or bypassing the contentious discussion of a Measure J amendment.
Sadly, the city of Davis is not alone in this. There is a reason why the housing crisis is statewide and why California leads the nation in both homelessness and unsheltered homelessness.
So for my column today, I’m going to highlight a column that appeared in CalMatters: “If California won’t back affordable housing funding, well, you get what you pay for.”
Last week we reported the Housing Bond Measure was withdrawn from the November ballot. This was not a measure that would have directly impacted Davis and it was not a statewide decision.
On Wednesday the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority made a decision to remove a $20 billion general obligation bond measure for the production and preservation of affordable housing from the November 5 general election ballot in all nine Bay Area counties.
The measure would have worked toward the production, preservation, and protection of an estimated 72,000 affordable housing units across the region.
I saw this as a potential model for funding affordable housing at least on a regional basis – if not on a statewide basis.
That’s the point of Maria Briones column in CalMatters – the state has failed to fund affordable housing.
Briones is a 68 year old grandmother who is homeless.
She noted that not only are seniors the fastest-growing demographic of Californians becoming homeless, according to a study released last year by UC San Francisco’s Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, but that she is part of “the 80% of homeless seniors who had housing before becoming homeless, whether that was due to loss of income, conflicts with a landlord or California’s high housing costs.”
She writes that the city has made promises to move her into affordable housing, but “so far nothing has happened.”
Why is that? “There is hardly any affordable housing in Los Angeles. In fact, there is practically no affordable housing available for low-income seniors like me, and others who don’t make enough to afford the state’s high housing costs.”
This is a story of promises made – promises broken.
Despite huge increases in homelessness, lack of affordable housing and the emphasis on homelessness as a top statewide issue in California, she argues, “the state has made very little progress on investing in the housing so many of us need. In 2022, Gov. Gavin Newsom promised to build 1 million affordable homes by 2030. Two years later, the governor is nowhere near that goal.”
She adds, “What’s worse, state legislators recently refused to include Assemblymember Buffy Wicks‘ proposed $10 billion affordable housing bond on the November ballot. This bond would have provided a huge kickstart to the goal of building 1 million affordable homes across the state.
“It is initiatives like these that can turn the tide against homelessness and housing insecurity, offering hope and stability to seniors and vulnerable populations.”
In short, the state – despite the fact, that I believe the Governor and key legislators strongly believe we need housing and affordable housing and funding for permanent supportive housing for the homeless and seniors at risk of homelessness, we have done far too little as a state.
And I would argue that we have done far too little as a community in Davis to address what we can in terms of homelessness.
And yet, here we go. We will now go through another complete election cycle from 2022 to 2024 with absolutely no progress locally on addressing housing. Moreover, we have gone through another full election cycle at the state level and we have seen minimal progress and only on the periphery of addressing these critical needs.
I would argue that we have actually gone backwards. The governor is focused on flashy things like clearing homeless encampments.
Meanwhile as Brione points out: “in the most recent state budget passed last month, over $1 billion was cut from affordable housing and homeless services programs. California is spending less than 1% of its budget on housing, while some $18 billion annually is the investment needed to solve this housing crisis.”
