This week in affordable housing news, a Public Policy Institute of California poll finds homelessness—for the first time ever—has topped the list as the state’s number one problem, as reported by the Sacramento Bee. When asked the open-ended question, “What is the most important issue facing California today,” 15 percent of respondents said homelessness and jobs—a response transcending party lines, with Democrats, Republicans, and independents all in agreement. “You don’t see that much anymore,” said PPIC President Mark Baldassare.” Housing was the second biggest concern, with 11% of respondents listing it as their top issue. CalMatters has a helpful animated chart showing how homelessness and housing are viewed in every region.

City Lab highlights an overlooked story in the state’s housing crisis—the growing struggles of renters in Fresno, the state’s “poorest big city,” and other parts of the Central Valley. While these areas have long been viewed as a “relative bargain” compared to more expensive coastal communities, that is changing fast—with rents climbing 6.2 percent in Fresno County in the last year to an average of $1,060 per month. That’s the second-highest jump among California’s ten largest cities, behind only Oakland. These increases have left almost 60 percent of renter households in Fresno County “rent burdened”—meaning they spend more than 30% of their income on housing. Cities like Stockton and Modesto face a similar situation, says David Garcia of UC-Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation: “Renters in these communities are often times just as cost-burdened as those in high-cost areas—sometimes even more so, due to the disparity in incomes.”

Finally, a new idea for tapping more resources for affordable housing made the news this week, when Governor Newsom signed a bill this week allowing California cities to form their own “public banks.” The bill’s author, Assemblymember David Chiu, acknowledges these banks may take years to establish, according to the Sacramento Bee,but he views them as another important tool to support affordable housing and other community priorities: “The public’s money should serve the public’s purpose, not line the pockets of Wall Street investors,” Chiu said in a statement. “This is about giving local communities the option to bank elsewhere and make our tax dollars work for our communities.”

STATE HOUSING POLICIES

Affordable housing coming to state-owned lots, starting with this one in downtown Sacramento
Sacramento Bee
An affordable housing complex will be built at a downtown Sacramento lot – one of the first projects to come to fruition from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s January executive order to encourage affordable housing projects on state-owned land. The four-story building will be constructed near the corner of 14th and O streets, just one block from Capitol Park, said Tom Kigar of the Capitol Area Development Authority, a group created by the city and state, which is developing the apartment project.

California cities could open their own public banks under new law meant to fund housing
Sacramento Bee
California cities could start their own public banks under a new law Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Wednesday in an effort to make it easier for projects in the public interest, like affordable housing, to access capital. The measure lays out a process for local agencies to create their own public banks that would likely take years.

Will Newsom Sign Bill Reviving Redevelopment Agencies?
Capital & Main
As California’s homelessness crisis burgeons, affordable housing advocates estimate that at least $8 billion of state support to public housing investment has been lost since 2012. “Every city’s percentage went up,” says Randy Shaw, director of San Francisco’s Tenderloin Housing Clinic (THC) and author of Generation Priced Out, of the resulting spike in homelessness. “Oakland had no money and their homeless rate went up 47 percent. L.A. had to raise their own money.  Every city would have benefited from state funding.”

Can a new agency crack the housing nut?
CalMatters
When California was admitted as a state in 1850, its 92,597 residents (as found in the 1850 census) were scattered among just 27 counties. Almost immediately, efforts were mounted to create even more counties and ultimately, the number more than doubled to 58, the last being Imperial, which broke away from San Diego County in 1907.

Editorial: Help for California’s Housing Crisis Is in the Backyard
Bloomberg
California is in the midst of a housing crisis, and homeowners opposed to development in their neighborhoods are making it worse. The state is trying a new approach: Turn some of them into mini-developers. It’s a smart idea that deserves Governor Gavin Newsom’s support.

Opinion: ‘Granny flats’ law won’t solve the housing crisis, but it will increase fire hazards
Sacramento Bee
Senate Bill 13, intended to address the housing crisis, simply trades one problem for another due to unintended consequences that are sure to occur if certain aspects of the bill are not addressed before it’s enacted. While we recognize the housing crisis faced by Californians, we cannot solve it if we cannot protect and insure our homes.

TENANT PROTECTION

How California’s Tenants Won Statewide Rent Control
Capital & Main
California’s progressive activists won a major victory in mid-September when the state legislature passed, and Governor Gavin Newsom promised to sign, a bill creating unprecedented protections for renters facing skyrocketing rents and arbitrary evictions in a state where the increasing unaffordability of housing has reached crisis proportions.

LOCAL HOUSING INITIATIVES

California’s Poorest Big City Faces a Different Kind of Housing Crisis
City Lab
On a recent weekday morning in Fresno’s Addams neighborhood, 10 women gathered in the recreation room of a mobile home park. A local nonprofit had convened this meeting to assist the low-income community in this metropolis of one million in California’s San Joaquin Valley. Over the babble of toddlers playing in the back, attendees spoke in Spanish about various local needs: One person was concerned about a dangerous street crossing; others described a frustrating gap in trash pickup.

Gentrification is the new litmus test to be elected county supervisor in South L.A.
Los Angeles Times
The last time there was an open seat for the 2nd District on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, it was 2008 and South L.A. was a very different place than it is today. Generations of disinvestment had led to stubbornly low property values that were made worse by the Great Recession. The violent crime rate was double what it was in the rest of the county. Blight was dragging down entire neighborhoods south of the 10 Freeway, making it hard to attract the type of development and jobs that Crenshaw, Watts, and other black and Latino communities so badly needed.

Opinion: Building development next to nature preserve is a bad idea
San Diego Union Tribune
The Preserve at Torrey Highlands office complex was approved by a 6-3 vote of the San Diego City Council on Aug. 5, adding an amendment to the Torrey Highlands Community Plan that enables construction of the complex over the objections of neighbors, the Rancho Peñasquitos Community Planning Board, the Del Mar Mesa Community Planning Board, and almost every major environmental outlet focusing on land use within the city.

HOMELESSNESS

Californians say homelessness is a top problem facing the state, survey finds
Sacramento Bee
For the first time, Californians said homelessness is one of the biggest issues affecting the state today, according to a newly released survey. The Public Policy Institute of California said its poll found that 15 percent of all Californians cited homelessness as the state’s No. 1 problem, as many as said the economy was a top cause of concern.

Thousands of California seniors are ‘one disaster away’ from homelessness. What can the state do?
USA Today
In 2013, Madlynn Johnson had her own apartment and a steady job. A car accident changed everything. Her job gave her months off work. She drained her savings. She couldn’t catch up on rent and other bills. Depression took hold. In 2014, she lost her housing in the San Francisco Bay Area. Nationally, Johnson was one of the 40,000 people age 65 and older who were homeless in 2017, according to a study by researchers in Los Angeles, New York and Boston. That number is expected to nearly triple by 2030. 

Does California Need A Homelessness ‘State Of Emergency’?
KPCC
Governor Gavin Newsom’s task force on homelessness met Friday in Los Angeles to discuss ideas for more quickly getting people off the streets. Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, who co-chairs the task force, has recently called on California officials to declare a “state of emergency” on homelessness.

Doctor’s orders: Provide affordable housing, and people’s health will improve
CalMatters
Americans are less healthy than their peers in other developed countries. On most measures—chronic illness, maternal mortality, longevity—Americans lag their international counterparts despite leading the world in health care spending per capita by a wide margin. For years, researchers have sought to explain this discrepancy by pointing not only to the absence of universal insurance coverage, which consistently leads to a healthier population, but also to social determinants such as education, transportation, and eating habits.

‘Sicker than the rest of us” — More docs making house calls to people without houses
CalMatters
Dr. Coley King of the Venice Family Clinic is one of a growing number of medical professionals making house calls to people who are homeless. Instead of trying to powerwash the problem away, California’s hospitals, public health departments and homeless service organizations are increasingly sending trained health practitioners into homeless encampments in a quest to improve health outcomes for individual homeless people.

Opinion: Yes, President Trump, we do have a homelessness crisis and you’re making it harder for us to address
The Hill
Over the last several months, in reprehensible tweets about American cities as rat infested and dirty, in callous press interviews about the impact of homeless people on foreign real estate investors, and in tone deaf responses to state and local leaders offering rational solutions to homelessness, President Trump has actually shone a spotlight on a wide-reaching epidemic enveloping hundreds of thousands of Americans who have no place to live, and the communities who lack the funds, but have the will, to house them.