This week in the news, a new poll finds 78 percent of Californians believe the state is in a housing crisis—and 82% believe homelessness has become a “very serious problem.” As the Sacramento Bee points out, only half of respondents—53% of Californians—believe they can afford to live in the state. Three in four people believe the state must build more affordable housing, especially for the homeless.

The Chico Enterprise Record covers the toll of the housing crisis on inland and rural areas, where stagnant wages, rising costs, and an influx of people fleeing expensive coastal regions are making affordable housing even harder to find, especially in areas impacted by recent wildfires. The vacancy rate in Chico reached zero even before last year’s Camp Fire, and while 600 homes are being built in the city, meeting demand will require the construction of closer to 6,000 new homes.

Lastly, the Sacramento Mayor, Darrell Steinberg, penned an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times about the urgent need for temporary shelter as well as permanent supportive housing to help the 130,000 Californians experiencing homelessness get off the streets. This week, Governor Newsom also announced a group of regional leaders and statewide experts who will serve on the administration’s new state Homeless and Supportive Housing Advisory Task Force, chaired by Mayor Steinberg and Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas.

STATE HOUSING POLICIES

California Is Divided Over Development Amid Severe Housing Shortage
NPR
The governor of California wants cities in his state to build more housing, but some of them don’t appear to be moving fast enough. The state has taken Huntington Beach to court.

Just half of Californians believe they can afford to live here, poll finds
Sacramento Bee
Who can afford to live in California? A newly released Quinnipiac University poll found that just slightly more than half, or 53 percent, of Californians believe they can afford to live in the Golden State. Surveyors spoke to 1,125 California voters between July 10-15, with a margin of error of 3.9 percentage points.

Has Gavin Newsom made progress on his pledge to boost California’s housing supply?
PolitiFact
On the campaign trail, Gavin Newsom promised to rapidly expand California’s housing supply, saying he would “lead the effort to develop 3.5 million new housing units” by 2025 to address the state’s affordable housing crisis. Two years ago, as lieutenant governor, he wrote on Medium, “Simply put, we’re experiencing a housing affordability crisis, driven by a simple economic argument. California is leading the national recovery but it’s producing far more jobs than homes.

Google, development ally ready huge Bay Area housing effort
Mercury News
Google has reached an agreement with a real estate ally to help the search giant realize its wide-ranging ambitions to create several mixed-used neighborhoods — including more housing —  in three Bay Area communities: downtown San Jose, Sunnyvale, and Mountain View, the companies said Wednesday.

Oregon vowed not to become California — and passed sweeping housing crisis legislation
Los Angeles Times
When Oregon’s political leaders debated solutions to a housing crisis that was forcing renters from their homes and sending prices through the roof, they had a central goal in mind: avoid the fate of their neighbor to the south. “In Portland, we’re just trying not to become San Francisco,” said Tina Kotek, the speaker of Oregon’s House of Representatives.

Court tells Calif. to use mortgage settlement money to help homeowners
San Francisco Chronicle
The state Supreme Court turned down arguments by two California governors Wednesday and left intact a ruling requiring the state to use $331 million, obtained from a nationwide bank settlement, to help homeowners who were victimized by foreclosures during the last recession.

Soaring Building Costs Are Slowing Housing Recovery
Fox & Hounds Daily
By all accounts, California is in the depths of a crisis.  Affordable housing can’t be found in the state’s growing job centers – enjoying an economic renaissance of sorts but with no place to house a burgeoning workforce.  To preserve that welcome growth, now, more than ever, there is a need to build additional housing, everywhere – paying particular attention to lower-income households.

HOUSING CRISIS

Report calls on area cities to create more housing to ease county shortage
Los Angeles Times
Costa Mesa, Huntington Beach and Newport Beach each is projected to produce less than 5,000 units of housing in the next few decades, according to a report by the Orange County Business Council. Cities should partner with local developers to create more housing for current and future residents; otherwise, the county’s existing shortage will get worse, said Wallace Walrod, chief economic advisor for the Business Council.

Nearly all of California’s crises are worse in its Latino communities, new report says
Los Angeles Times
Five years ago this month, the demographic face of California changed for the first time in its modern history. Latinos became the state’s largest ethnic group — gaining a newfound dominance, though one that had been expected for decades. But a new report offers a sober look at a different marker of distinction, one that shows Latinos fare worse than their fellow Californians on nearly every big quandary the state faces, even as its economy grows.

Chico, rural communities losing affordability in deepening statewide housing crisis
Chico Enterprise Record
Much has been written about the California housing crisis, but the fight to stay in the state isn’t just faced by those in major cities in Los Angeles County or the Bay Area. As more and more residents have moved inland to escape costs, the problem of availability has followed them. A once-invisible crisis is now facing rural communities like those in Butte County, thanks to rising housing prices and stagnating wages in an area crippled by the most damaging wildfire in the state’s history.

HOMELESSNESS

Mayor angered it takes so ‘damn long’ to build housing as homelessness spikes
San Francisco Chronicle
Big-city mayors get bad news all the time, but the news Mayor London Breed got in May was disastrous. For years, San Francisco’s homeless count had stayed pretty consistent. Up 2% one year, down 3% another. Basically, the city was treading water on its most pressing crisis. But this year’s homeless count showed San Francisco is drowning.

Gov. Gavin Newsom announces advisers on combating homelessness
ABC 10
Gov. Gavin Newsom is moving forward with plans to combat homelessness in California. He announced the names of the regional leaders and statewide experts who will advise his administration on developing solutions to address the state’s homelessness epidemic.

Sacramento mayor says California must require cities to provide shelter space for homeless
Sacramento Bee
Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg is calling for an enforceable statewide “right to shelter” mandate that would require communities to have enough shelter space or other housing to accommodate their homeless populations, a strategy modeled after a decades-long program in New York City.

Downtown SF businesses to tax themselves to pay for clean streets, homeless outreach
San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco businesses rarely celebrate new taxes. But when given the choice to pay a little extra for more street cleaning, trash collection, power washing and street-beautification — all of which help attract tenants and customers — most landlords and businesses embrace the idea.

Op-Ed: Los Angeles should look to New York for answers to its homeless problem
Los Angeles Times
During the 1980s, when I first started as an emergency room doctor at New York City’s Bellevue Hospital, a frequent part of the job was treating homeless people who were FOS — short for Found on Street. These patients might be victims of rape, hypothermia or starvation. They might have hepatitis or tuberculosis. But they were also more than occasionally sent to the hospital because what they needed was “three squares and a blanket” as we called it.

Op-Ed: Building more permanent housing alone won’t solve homelessness in California
Los Angeles Times
While serving in the state Legislature, I authored California’s Mental Health Services Act and later sponsored its housing offshoot, No Place Like Home. The idea of the legislation was to establish a “housing first” mentality in California that prioritized getting people off the streets and into permanent housing, where they could then get supportive services for mental illness, substance abuse and other issues.