Vanguard Commentary: Why We Cover Housing

Editor’s note: David Greenwald is on vacation with his family for the Thanksgiving Weekend

Every so often someone asks why the Vanguard has spent so much time covering housing over the last several years. The most recent version came from Alan Miller, who wrote, “I’m really curious. Why all the articles on housing for the last several years?”

It’s a fair question, and the answer deserves more than a one-line response.

At first glance, housing might seem like just one topic among many we cover — and numerically, it is. The Vanguard spends far more time reporting on courts, policing, civil rights, governance, immigration, incarceration, criminal justice reform, and statewide policy than we do on land use debates or ballot-measure housing proposals.

But here’s the reality:

Housing is the thread that runs underneath everything else.

When we talk about school enrollment decline, we’re really talking about housing — because young families can’t afford to live in Davis.

When we talk about the teacher shortage or why nurses, restaurant workers, graduate students, and childcare providers commute from Woodland, Sacramento or Vacaville, we’re talking about housing — because wages haven’t risen anywhere near the cost of living.

When we talk about racial and economic segregation, we’re talking about housing — because who gets to live in a community is the first driver of who belongs, who benefits, and who participates.

And when we talk about homelessness, public safety, or the criminal legal system, we are talking about housing more than anything else.

Last week, in San Francisco, during coverage of unavailability hearings, the head of their conflict panel described how dramatically the client base has shifted over the last decade and a half.

They’re now seeing a large percentage of clients trapped in a cycle of being unhoused or housing-insecure — often paired with mental illness or substance use — but the constant denominator is housing instability. Many of these same individuals were housed ten or fifteen years ago when rent wasn’t outpacing wages by miles.

That shift is happening everywhere.

The courts, jails and public defenders’ offices have become — whether anyone admits it or not — the default mental health system, the default addiction treatment system, and, increasingly, the default homeless services system. And none of those systems are designed for that role.

So when someone asks, “Why are people sleeping in doorways?” or “Why are people pooping on private property?” the uncomfortable but honest answer is not mysterious: because they do not have housing, and without housing they do not have bathrooms, stability, storage, treatment, or safety.

We can talk about mental illness. We can talk about fentanyl. We can talk about personal responsibility. But the truth is that many people now struggling visibly in public were once quietly housed, functional, or at least stable — until the cost of housing soared beyond accessibility.

Housing is not a niche policy topic. It is the ground that every other community outcome is built on: education, equity, public health, economic inclusion, aging in place, sustainability, transportation, and yes — criminal justice.

If we want fewer people cycling through jails, fewer visible encampments, fewer mental health crises on sidewalks, fewer emergency room revolving-door cases, and fewer children forced to change school districts, then we cannot treat housing as an optional or decorative issue.

We cover housing because it answers the questions people keep asking about everything else.

Not because it’s the only story — but because it is the root of so many stories.

Housing determines who gets to live here, who gets pushed out, and what kind of community Davis — or any city — becomes. It shapes whether future residents will look like the present or only like those who can afford to stay.

So when people ask why the Vanguard covers housing, the answer is simple:

Because the future of this community — socially, economically, morally, and structurally — depends on it.

And because ignoring the biggest driver of our biggest challenges is the fastest way to make them worse.

That’s why we cover housing.

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