Last Friday, HUD released its annual estimate of homelessness and that figure shows that people living on the streets increased by 2.7 percent this year nationally – almost exclusively because California experienced a whopping 16.4 percent increase in homelessness in 2019.
HUD Secretary Ben Carson said in a statement we saw great progress across the country, except for the West Coast where soaring housing costs are being blamed.
Mr. Carson said, “In fact, homelessness in California is at a crisis level and needs to be addressed by local and state leaders with crisis-like urgency.”
The HUD estimate finds California’s increase was “higher than all other states combined.”
The homeless and housing problems have persisted despite efforts by lawmakers and voters to provide more in the way of affordable housing. Statewide voters approved a $4 billion affordable housing bond last November. Los Angeles passed its own $1.2 billion housing bond in 2016. San Francisco voters approved $600 million in bonds for affordable housing.
And yet reports continue to show that cities are slow to spend money on shelters due to neighborhood opposition – something Davis recently experienced with the proposed respite center, and Davis is not alone.
A big need in California – simply more housing.
“Broadly speaking, there is no solution to the California housing crisis without the construction of millions of new houses,” said David Garcia, policy director for the Terner Center for Housing 
Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley.
That group estimates that California needs about 3.5 million more homes by the 2025. That is the figure often cited by Governor Newsom, who has made it a central part of his administration’s goals.
The bad news: we are unlikely to get there.
A report this past summer, commissioned by California Forward, concluded that California is not prepared to meet that goal.
They summarize their findings, saying “there is currently not enough available, urban-served land identified for the state’s current and future housing needs…” Moreover, “the research concludes the biggest barriers to housing production are a host of planning and regulatory restrictions and market constraints which limit housing development.”
“We can’t accommodate all our growth in high-transit areas,” report author Walter Kieser, senior principal of Economic & Planning Systems said in October. “To accommodate growth and produce housing, we have to expand the areas that are transit-served or figure out other kinds of transit service that will connect us to meet GHG targets.”
(“The 3.5 million home target derives from work conducted in 2016 by McKinsey Global Institute, in association with California Forward’s Economic Summit,” the California Forward report notes).
The report concludes that “it is highly unlikely, if not impossible, that such a target can be met by 2025 given the state’s current rates of production and existing market and regulatory barriers.” They suggest “a longer time frame is in order over the next 30 years (coincident with the time horizon for most regional planning efforts in the state) so that population and household demand forecasts can be linked to increases in available, urban-served land.”
It is perhaps easy to blame California, but one report from this fall found “the rest of the country is becoming more—not less—like California.” That report found that despite the longest economic expansion on record, “the U.S. has been building far fewer houses than it usually does, pushing prices further out of reach for a vast portion of the population that has barely seen incomes rise.”
“California is not alone,” said Chris Herbert, the managing director of Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. “It’s just more extreme.”
The White House recently made headlines targeting California and homelessness. President Trump suggested in November that federal intervention may be needed.
“The people of San Francisco are fed up and the people of Los Angeles are fed up, and we’re looking at it, and we will be doing something about it at the appropriate time,” President Trump said in September.
California would welcome a cooperative effort that focuses federal resources on federal funds, reduction of regulations for new buildings, and increasing shelter space.
But most are leery of the president’s intentions. Indeed, White House spokesman Judd Deere blamed “over regulation, excessive taxation, and poor public service delivery” for a dramatic increase in homelessness.
“The federal government has enormous power, obviously, and you always want to believe that there might be the opportunity for a real partnership on a life and death set of issues,” said Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg. “But you can’t help but be cynical when it involves this president and his consistent pattern of behavior.”
But if California is simply reflecting growing trends in the nation, California may simply be the leading indicator of a national housing and homelessness problem.
“The folks crying about California’s failure here are correct,” said Rev. Andy Bales, CEO of Los Angeles’ Union Rescue Mission. “We leave more human beings on the streets than anyone. We are not treating it with the urgency we need.”
The question is – will the federal government and other critics simply point fingers or will they launch action?
Simply using the police to clear people off the streets is not likely to be effective. Recently the Supreme Court failed to take up a 9th District ruling from last year that limits and restricts the ability of cities and counties to use law enforcement to clear encampments without available shelters.
Most experts believe that simply putting homeless people into the criminal justice system is not a solution.
“It’s politicizing some of the most vulnerable people in our country, which is really shameful and atrocious,” said Diane Yentel, who heads the National Low Income Housing Coalition, an advocacy group.
So far it appears easy to point fingers and propose draconian solutions, and hard to provide actual funding to create shelters and services that could make a difference in reducing the homeless population.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
In reality, California’s growth rate has slowed dramatically. There’s multiple articles on the Internet, confirming this.
Here’s one such article, which notes a decline in the birth rate (as well as other factors):
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-12-21/california-population-continues-to-decline-with-state-emigration-a-major-factor
(Sounds like the governor’s plan is D.O.A., and was never realistic in the first place.)
Doesn’t really matter if it has, we have a shortage of housing.
https://www.ocregister.com/2019/12/10/chapman-forecast-is-californias-housing-shortage-a-mirage/
That’s one person’s opinion. The problem with it, is part of the slow population growth has to do with cost of housing and lack of availability. So he’s projecting a feedback loop.
Another word for that is “sustainability”. Note that it’s actually reducing the number of births, according to some.
Another word for it is that you are pricing poor people and people of color out of the state because they can’t afford housing.
Seems to me that a lot of the policies that you advocate end up “displacing” poor people and people of color from areas that are already high-priced.
This is what one person is saying: “The great tragedy is this place was a middle-class paradise, and now you’ve got the flight of the middle class with all their aspirations, leaving the poor, the rich and a transient population,” says Joel Kotkin, presidential fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University in Orange, California
Here is another: says low income people are being priced out: https://youtu.be/3mQ77g3_Z9A
Economic development (which isn’t “evenly” distributed) is what’s causing people to be displaced. That’s why there’s still a net inflow of wealthier individuals to high-priced areas (such as the Bay Area).
They’re “replacing” those who are less-wealthy, who are not in a position to take advantage of those opportunities. Within California, the Sacramento region is a primary destination of those displaced from the Bay Area, as well as those who simply want “more for their money”, regarding housing.
In reference to HUD (and Trump’s appointee Ben Carson – as mentioned in David’s article), here’s the type of thing that they’ve actually been exploring. (Which has nothing to do with Newsom’s “plan”. Newsom’s plan was not intended to house homeless individuals.)
https://www.thenation.com/article/trump-homeless-california/
It will just mean we need less housing down the line if growth continues to slow.
https://www.ocregister.com/2019/12/10/chapman-forecast-is-californias-housing-shortage-a-mirage/
Getting back to homelessness (and what the Trump administration is actually exploring):
https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/12/trump-policy-homeless-executive-order-city-services-shelters/603670/
(Again, just noting this – not “advocating” it. But, it’s a stark contrast to the approach advocated by many California officials.)
“In reality, California’s growth rate has slowed dramatically.”
Why is that relevant to the issue of people that are homeless? If you are one of the tens of thousands of Californians that are homeless the macroeconomics of housing are meaningless.
I agree. It seems that you haven’t read David’s article (above), in which he attempts to tie these factors together.
That’s why I responded to it, in the manner in which I did.
“Mr. Carson said, ‘In fact, homelessness in California is at a crisis level and needs to be addressed by local and state leaders with crisis-like urgency.’”
Thanks for all the help from the Feds.
Seems like it’s coming, in a manner that many California officials vehemently oppose. (In reference to my comments / linked articles, above.)
I blames meth. I also blames meth for poor grammar.
So that’s $5.8 billion — and so we shame so-called NIMBYs, i.e. relatively low-income working class Davisites who care about their neighborhood. Shamed by do-gooder egotists who say “you should work at at a homeless shelter like me, Mz. Goodie-Goodie, and then you’d understand, but you don’t, because you’re a bad NIMBY, and a house is going to fall on your sister.”
But seriously folks, the all-powerful Davis Manor decent people didn’t stop the Respite Center in their neighborhood — oh, but DV says it’s NIMBYs who are keeping the $5.8 billion from actually doing any good. How exactly did they do that if they didn’t even stop it? Did you ever consider the massive corruption of the Homeless Industrial Complex instead to be the culprit?
Or that developers are taking advantage of this whole thing to kill zoning so they can build more high-end housing with the addition of government subsidies to fund so-called ‘affordable’ housing some of which ends up in the developer’s pocket?
A ruling which our police chief – unless I read him totally wrong (watch the video, you decide) – was noticeably was quite disturbed by at the last council meeting.
Signing off for now, may you all have a mediocre holiday season,
Alan “Shameful & Atrocious” Miller
You lost me at “HUD Secretary Ben Carson said …” The Trump administration has shown its continued hostility to California by casting blame and withholding needed federal assistance. Editorial: President Trump, if you really care about homelessness, help California house homeless people.
As to the topic of ‘displaced’… no one who lives in Davis (or, anywhere else), who has bought (mortgage or not) a residence can be involuntarily be displaced by rising housing value costs… so, we’re talking renters… would be nice if this type of discussion focused on rentals… but, that won’t happen, am sure… folk want to make it ‘universal’ to attract interest…
Some folk own their housing outright… mortgages paid off.
They can if they lose a job and can’t afford the property taxes.
The impetus for Prop. 13 was based on this – people were leaving CA to escape property tax hikes they could not afford. Instead, they passed a limit, so future house owners took a greater burden.
Certainly renters be a big part of it.
Odd how progressives see the fact that California has so many homeless per capita. Like it’s a right to stay in San Francisco, Santa Monica or Ventura or Venice Beach with no rent, then spout studies of how they are mostly locals. My homeless friend “Brad” (not his real name, Abbey), who has been houseless in this town for about 35 years, paints quite a different picture of the changes in the Davis scene over the past decade, with a ‘new wave’ of out-of-towners quite unwelcome by the townies.
Well, as you point out, prop 13 increases only allow 2% increase (max) on valuations. So, to keep math simple, for a $500 k home, the most ‘the market’ could affect valuation is $10 k (given year)… at the basic rate (yes, there are de minimus other taxes based on valuation), we’re talking $100/yr.
Sure looks like parcel taxes (not ad valorem) are much more a risk than market forces on housing…
If they lose a job, their existing mortgage payments, existing taxes, etc., sure seems like an ‘orders of magnitude’ higher ‘threat’ than a 5% increase in ownership values. We could add other “if’s”… besides ‘lose job’, have high medical costs, new child, divorce (w/existing children)…
If a $100 year increased cost drives anyone from Davis, they were already on the wrong side of “the edge”… particularly if they have already purchased a property.
But, bottom line, just don’t see how increases in market prices could ‘price’ any existing home owners out of Davis… am I missing something, or is it only existing renters who might be “displaced”? [Entering the Davis market is an entirely different matter!]
That’s if one is protected by Prop. 13, i.e. ‘won the California lottery’
Some new (but limited) protections against rent increases and evictions will be in effect statewide, starting January 1st:
https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article238443508.html
Lots of exceptions! Don’t assume ‘you’ are ‘protected’. Also, ‘laws of unintended consequences’ will be off the scale on this one.
It’s a start. I understand that other states have also been pursuing/enacting this type of protection.
I’m aware of the arguments for, and against rent control. (The law that takes effect on January 1st is described as a “cap”.)
Regardless, I’m also aware of some who have benefited greatly from rent control – in cities that have pursued it under current laws.