This week in affordable housing news, the San Diego City Council approved two bold policies aimed at spurring affordable construction and development near job centers, as reported by KPBS and the San Diego Union Tribune. On Monday the council approved zoning changes that will accelerate development of denser, mixed-use projects near job centers, where walkable neighborhoods can help the region achieve its climate goals. On Tuesday, the council updated its inclusionary housing policies, as well, raising fees developers must pay to avoid including affordable units in their projects. “We’ve been asking a lot from low-income San Diegans for far too long and their backs are breaking,” said Councilman Chris Ward.

A San Francisco Chronicle op-ed this week warns that the number of older people experiencing homelessness in the city will triple by 2030—as seniors living on fixed incomes are trapped by rising housing prices and low vacancy rates. The first thing that needs be done in response? “Create more affordable housing for seniors,” the piece says. The Orange County Register also weighs in on its county homelessness count—finding African-Americans and Latinos are vastly overrepresented in the homelessness population. Almost 60% of Orange County’s homeless families are Hispanic or Latino, the article finds, compared to 34.2% of the county’s general population.

Finally, the Modesto Bee covers the existential crisis facing many Californians as they wrestle with dwindling affordable housing options—and rents that have climbed an average of 53% over the last five years. “Can’t afford to move, can’t afford to stay,” says one woman in a captivating profile of residents who are struggling to pay for housing, from families, first responders, and commuters to those displaced by wildfires, people caring for aging family members, and young workers struggling with student loan debt.

HOUSING CRISIS

‘Can’t afford to move, can’t afford to stay’: Spike in housing costs has many stuck
Modesto Bee
Four years ago, Elizabeth and her fiance were paying $650 a month for a studio apartment in a nice complex in Modesto. The city’s housing shortage in the next few years pushed their rent to $1,050 per month. Facing another rental increase to $1,150, the parents, now with a newborn, searched for 10 months for a more affordable place and found a two-bedroom costing $850 a month in a less desirable neighborhood.

Southern California cities cite ‘chaos’ in rejecting state push for more housing
Los Angeles Times
Reporting from Sacramento —  As the state continues to face an affordable housing crisis, Gov. Gavin Newsom and local governments in Southern California are heading toward a clash over just how much the region will grow in the next decade. Although Newsom has called for a building boom to alleviate a shortage of available homes he believes is at the root of the state’s problems, city and county leaders in Southern California are working to rein in potential development.

Permits for new Bay Area homes, apartments drop sharply
Mercury News
Despite a pressing demand for new homes, condos and apartments, residential building permits in California fell 16 percent in the last year, dropping for the first time since the recession nearly a decade ago. In the Bay Area, permits to build new homes and apartments tanked — falling nearly 50 percent in San Mateo County compared with the prior year, 30 percent in Alameda County, nearly 10 percent in Santa Clara County and 7 percent in Contra Costa County, according to a new analysis by the Public Policy Institute of California.

Nearly 100,000 millennials in the Sacramento area live at home. Why your kids can’t move out
Sacramento Bee
Mary Thammavong is a 29-year-old electrician who helped build Golden 1 Center arena. But she’s never lived away from home, and although she’d love to discover herself as an adult by living alone, she isn’t sure if she can afford it yet. Wendy Tram, a 24-year-old accountant, has never left her parents’ south Sacramento home, and sees no reason to until she gets married.

Here’s how Atherton became the Bay Area’s most expensive city for housing — by far
San Francisco Chronicle
Atherton has had the Bay Area’s highest home prices for at least a decade, but in recent years it has surged way ahead of its peers to become the most expensive ZIP code in the nation, a fact that’s often touted in real estate listings. The town’s ascendance stems largely from its single-family zoning, 1-acre-minimum lot sizes, flat land, streamlined permits and changing buyer demographics — which have translated into soaring house sizes and skyrocketing prices.

Commentary: Why fewer people will be living in single-family homes
Santa Rosa Press Democrat
In the name of slowing the escalation of housing prices, Oregon is poised to become the first state to abandon single-family zoning in the state’s largest cities. “In Portland, we’re just trying not to become San Francisco,” the speaker of the Oregon House of Representatives told the Los Angeles Times. In Minneapolis, the City Council last year approved a new long-term zoning map that allows duplexes and triplexes anywhere in the city and declares the city’s intention to banish single-family zoning.

FEDERAL HOUSING POLICIES

Opinion: Working across the aisle on housing
Orange County Register
In 1986, President Ronald Reagan, a Republican, and Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill, a Democrat, did something impossible by today’s partisan political standards: They worked together to pass the Tax Reform Act of 1986, which simplified the federal tax code and broadened the tax base by eliminating personal deductions and tax shelters.

TENANT PROTECTION

California rent control bill could impact 1.2 million LA homes
Curbed Los Angeles
As many as 1.2 million more homes in LA County would fall under rent control if California’s “anti-rent gouging” bill, Assembly Bill 1482, becomes law, according to new figures compiled by researchers at UC Berkeley. That includes up to 374,088 units in the city of Los Angeles—a big increase in the city’s existing stock of rent-controlled units, which the Terner Center pegs at 469,845.

Relocation assistance for renters: A necessity amid the housing crisis? Or a cumbersome business burden to Long Beach property owners?
Long Beach Press Telegram
Wedged between rows of variegated single-family homes, on Alamitos Avenue, sits a dual-property apartment complex. The exteriors of 900 and 904 Alamitos Ave. are beige, or maybe a cream-yellow – shaded, perhaps, by grime, and made illusory by patchwork touch-ups. Steel blue trim adds spot color. Desert-hued brick – synthetic, akin to textured wallpaper – borders the bottom. A wrought-iron fence and a concrete courtyard connect the two properties.

San Jose begins crafting its anti-displacement policy
San Jose Spotlight
As Silicon Valley’s economic growth persists, residents are plagued with a turbulent housing crisis that continues to raise rents and increase displacement among communities of color. In the hub of the valley, San Jose now exemplifies the region’s widening inequality, leaving local leaders chasing solutions that aim to close that gap. 

LOCAL HOUSING INITIATIVES

San Diego City Council Narrowly Approves Policy Update To Spur More Affordable Housing
KPBS
The San Diego City Council on Tuesday narrowly approved a change to the city’s affordable housing policy that requires developers to pay a larger share of the costs to build homes for low-income people. The update to the so-called “inclusionary housing” policy proposed by Council President Georgette Gomez raises the fee developers pay to avoid including affordable housing in their projects. 

San Diego loosens zoning to encourage neighborhoods combining housing with jobs
San Diego Union Tribune
The San Diego City Council approved new zoning policies Monday allowing developers to more quickly and cheaply build large “mixed-use” projects featuring dense housing blended with commercial and industrial uses. The goal is spurring more developments in suburban-style parts of the city with large surface parking lots, such as Mission Valley, Kearny Mesa, Mira Mesa and University City.

HOMELESSNESS

California has the most homeless people of any state. But L.A. is still a national model
Los Angeles Times
With tens of thousands of homeless people living on the streets, Los Angeles officials have increasingly found themselves as the subject of criticism for what many Angelenos see as a failure to keep up with a problem that seems to be getting worse. But across the country, L.A. isn’t considered to be a failure. To the contrary, at last week’s National Conference on Ending Homelessness in Washington, D.C., attendees repeatedly held up both the city, the county and the state as models of political will for getting people into housing.

Bay Area’s new homeless epicenter?
San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco is known for its swelling homeless population, but Oakland has surpassed its neighbor across the bay, and other large cities in California, in a key measure: the concentration of homelessness compared with the number of people living there. A Chronicle analysis of city numbers on homelessness collected earlier this year found that there were an estimated 742 unsheltered homeless people in Oakland for every 100,000 residents — the highest among the state’s largest cities.

24 Hour Homeless
San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco spends more than $300 million a year fighting homelessness. Yet it’s not working – at least not enough. Amid a housing shortage, rampant drug addiction and a failing mental health care system, the everyday crisis on our streets has intensified. On June 18, 36 Chronicle journalists spread across the city to document a typical 24-hour period in this epidemic, witnessing an unrelenting cycle of striving and suffering, of some people finding their footing and others falling through.

What It’s Like to Live in Your Car
New York Times
On Tuesday, over strenuous objection from advocates for the homeless, the Los Angeles City Council voted to reinstate and extend rules that bar people from living in their vehicles in many parts of the city. The law, which expired at the beginning of the month, prohibits dwelling in vehicles at night on any residential street and at any time within a block of parks, schools and day cares.

Bay Area homelessness: 89 answers to your questions
San Francisco Chronicle
It seems like a simple question: Why does the Bay Area have such an acute — and worsening — homelessness crisis? Ask 20 people and you’ll likely get 20 different answers. There are perhaps more opinions about the causes of this epidemic than there are about any other topic, and even more opinions about what might solve it.

Can California Force Homeless People Into Shelters? Civil Rights Groups Call Plan Legally Questionable.
Capital Public Radio
Could California force homeless people to accept shelter space against their will? Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg and Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, who lead a state homelessness task force, recently proposed a way to do just that. Their “right to shelter” plan would first boost the supply of shelter space statewide — requiring cities and counties to build more beds — and then legally obligate homeless people to accept one if offered. 

Homeless survey shows racial imbalance in the struggle to find housing in Orange County
Orange County Register
The homeless population in Orange County is majority white, but people of color are vastly over represented when compared with the general population. That’s one of several key findings revealed in the 149-page final report from Orange County’s 2019 homeless Point In Time count released Tuesday, July 30, to the Board of Supervisors. The overall numbers from the “Everyone Counts” effort are the same as reported back in April from preliminary data: 6,860 homeless people in Orange County.

Editorial: Growing homeless crisis could spur awareness needed to solve it
San Francisco Chronicle
A defining part of homeless policy is frustration. The Bay Area numbers worsen, public sentiment wavers, and local leaders scramble for quick answers such as parking lots for rundown RVs or tiny cabins to replace tents. But that’s not the full picture of a social catastrophe that must be healed. More than ever, there is broad awareness, that critical quality that can open the way for solutions.

Opinion: More and more Californians are old, sick and on the streets. Here’s how we can fight senior homelessness.
San Francisco Chronicle
According to the recently released 2018 point-in-time counts, every Bay Area county has seen a large increase in its homeless population. In many cases, the increases were dramatic. Alameda saw an increase of 43% over the past two years; Santa Clara saw an increase of 31%. The tally in San Francisco has been startling, too: 30%, using the same standards the city has used in past years, and 17% according to federal guidelines.