Subscribe Donate

Tag: affordable housing

Home | Newsroom | affordable housing

Tag: affordable housing

Inland Empire Politicians Ignoring Housing Crisis While Conjuring Warehouse Crisis

, By Hallie Kutak and Nisha Vyas, Special to The Desert Sun, 

The telltale signs of income inequality, skyrocketing housing costs and chronic homelessness point to a grim reality. California is in a severe, escalating affordable housing crisis.

Again and again, leaders in Sacramento have identified the lack of available, suitable land as one of the main obstacles to affordable housing development. State and local agencies have expended millions in planning efforts to identify such available lands and prioritize them for housing.

But in the Inland Empire, decision makers seem unfazed by this reality and are enacting policies as if there were a warehouse crisis instead.

An astonishing 1 billion square feet of warehouse space has been built in San Bernardino and Riverside counties, with an additional 170 million square feet already approved or pending approval. Warehouses are increasing at a rate five times faster than population growth.

What’s most alarming is that cities and counties are approving massive logistics centers on land zoned for homes. At a time when we should be investing in affordable housing near transit and jobs, our decision makers vote to demolish neighborhoods, displacing residents and rolling out the welcome mat for industrial developers.

These untenable land-use decisions permanently eliminate prime real estate from home construction and bring in pollution that poisons the air for those who remain.

READ MORE

 

From Commodities To Communities: Reimagining Housing After The Pandemic

, UCLA Law Review
By Western Center’s Nisha N. Vyas and Matthew Warren
In Discourse, Special Issue: Law Meets World Vol. 68

Abstract

While COVID-19 is not the root cause of housing insecurity, the pandemic has pulled hundreds of thousands of Californians to the precipice of housing loss.  This Article describes the existing eviction process that values individual property rights over the human right to housing, and describes proposed legislative solutions to prevent evictions en masse before considering urgent long-term changes.  This moment calls for us to question the historical commodification of property, and to more towards a system that treats housing as a social good necessary for public health rather than a commodity to generate wealth for the privileged few.

From Commodities To Communities: Reimagining Housing After The Pandemic

Western Center Reaction to Governor Newsom’s Proposed 2020-2021 Budget

First and foremost, Western Center is pleased that Governor Newsom’s proposed budget includes significant and innovative proposals to address the homelessness crisis in California, which will not only help the thousands of people currently experiencing homelessness, but will also prevent more people from losing their housing. We are also pleased to see the Governor take another major step toward providing health care for all by expanding Medi-Cal coverage to undocumented adults over age 65, and to see the extension of the tax ban on period products and diapers, which makes our tax code more equitable for women, girls and young families.

We were hoping to see additional investments for CalWORKs and SSI grants in this proposal, since they are both crucial for lifting Californians out of poverty. We will continue to advocate for those increases in the final budget agreement.

Below are our initial reactions to the proposed budget by issue area. We will release an in-depth analysis next week.

Housing

The proposed budget appropriately treats the state’s homelessness crisis as an emergency. The proposal devotes additional resources to help people at risk of homelessness remain stably housed and to increase both temporary shelter capacity and permanent housing options for people already experiencing homelessness. We are pleased to see the Governor’s sustained commitment to addressing homelessness and look forward to working in partnership with his administration and legislative leaders to further develop effective, sustainable solutions to the crisis that prioritize residents living in poverty.

We agree with the Governor that the state must ramp up efforts to address the state’s shortage of housing, which is primarily a shortage at lower income levels. We are eager to work with the Governor to ensure that policies and programs to speed housing production prioritize the creation of units for households with the lowest incomes who are priced out of the rental market in every county in the state, protect low-income communities and communities of color from displacement, and increase access to high opportunity areas for our clients.

Financial Security

The budget includes funding to increase the CalWORKs child support pass through (read about it here). Currently, the first $50 of child support paid by a non-custodial parent goes to the CalWORKs family, but any amount over that is kept by state and federal governments. In the Governor’s newly proposed budget, CalWORKs families with one child will keep the first $100 of child support, and families with two or more children will keep the first $200 of child support, beginning January 2022. It also includes funding to provide debt relief for child support owed to the government that is deemed uncollectable. We are grateful that the Governor has heard from parents and families in their call for a child support program that works for children, and we are eager to see proposed associated trailer bill law changes for details. We look forward to working with the Governor and legislature to achieve the goals of conforming with federal law and regulation, and ensuring the program works to benefit the children it purports to help.

The budget also includes the extension of the tax ban on period products and diapers, which will make our tax code more equitable, since taxes on period products and diapers are regressive to poor families and young people. We look forward to continuing work in the legislature to end unmet diaper need and period poverty in California.

Additionally, the budget makes a $92 million investment in reducing criminal justice fees and their harmful, recidivistic impact on people with low-incomes and people of color, their families, and their communities. We are grateful to Budget Chair Mitchell for her leadership on this issue and look forward to working on details with her, the Governor, and other budget leaders. We’re also happy to see that Californians with low incomes will soon be able to reduce the cost of their traffic fines and the overall impact of expensive traffic tickets, with this budget proposing to expand the traffic court ability-to-pay pilot program (currently operational in four counties) statewide over several years. The pilot has yet to be evaluated, so we look forward to details from the Judicial Council to see if the program’s reductions in fines and fees are adequate or need to reduced further.

Finally, to further enhance financial security for Californians, the Governor’s budget creates a new state version of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The proposed financial watchdog will hold banks and other financial firms accountable when they engage in unfair and abusive debt collection and banking practices. Medical, student loan, school lunch, and other forms of debt disproportionally burden people experiencing poverty; we expect this new agency to offer important protections for our clients.

Health Care

We applaud the Governor for continuing to move toward universal coverage by making California the first in the nation to expand full-scope Medi-Cal to all income-eligible seniors regardless of immigration status, taking a whole person approach to Medi-Cal, and cost containment with an eye toward quality and equity. We look forward to working with the administration and legislature to advance a budget that ensures equitable access to affordable, comprehensive, quality health care for poor Californians.

The Governor’s proposal also delays suspension of benefits and eligibility, by extending certain Medi-Cal benefits (optical, audiology, podiatry, speech therapy, and incontinence creams and washes), extending Medi-Cal eligibility from 60 days to one year for post-partum women diagnosed with a mental health disorder, and expanding Medi-Cal screening for the overuse of opioids and illicit drugs, all until July 2023.

 

How California’s Tenants Won Statewide Rent Control

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.

…Led by ACCE, and such other progressive organizations as PICO California, the Western Center on Law and Poverty, Public Advocates, PolicyLink, and TechEquity, the organizers recruited more than 150 groups to support Chiu’s bill, including the state Democratic Party, the California Labor Federation (AFL-CIO), the California State Building and Construction Trades Council, the ACLU, the League of Women Voters, YIMBY Action, the Sierra Club, and California Alliance for Retired Americans.

Read more

The federal government can help with California’s homelessness crisis, but not Trump’s way

By Anya Lawler, Western Center Housing Policy Advocate 

Lately, President Trump has developed a keen interest in California’s homelessness crisis. On his fundraising trip through the state, the president expressed concern for the impact the crisis has on wealthy foreign real estate investors, and on “our best highways, our best streets, our best entrances to buildings.”

Notably absent from his concern is the one group that feels the impact of the crisis most—people who struggle to survive every day without a roof over their head. President Trump seems uninterested in humane, compassionate solutions, or ensuring that the federal government is fulfilling its responsibility by providing the resources needed to make sure everyone has safe, stable, affordable housing.

Instead, there are hints that the President is pursuing policies that would further criminalize homelessness and treat human beings struggling with poverty as objects to be warehoused out of view. This continues the Trump administration’s cruel pattern of using a humanitarian crisis as an excuse to remove people’s constitutional freedoms, and then blaming those hit hardest by the crisis for being there in the first place.

None of us should be surprised. The administration has introduced one heartless policy after another that, if implemented, would undoubtedly increase homelessness in California and beyond. A few examples:

  • The proposed DHS Public Charge Rule, which will hamper economic mobility and increase poverty by scaring immigrant families away from using crucial programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the Housing Choice Voucher Program, which help children and families exit poverty and prevent subsequent harm.
  • The proposed new HUD Mixed Status Rule, which will force families to make an impossible choice between removing family members from their household or losing needed housing assistance.
  • The proposed weakening of the HUD Disparate Impact Rule, which will limit housing opportunity by making it easier to discriminate against members of protected classes. If implemented, the rule will have a direct impact on the homelessness crisis by facilitating discrimination against people experiencing homelessness.
  • The proposed changes to the HUD Equal Access Rule, which flies in the face of proven solutions, and creates unnecessary barriers for accessing shelter, directly contributing to an increase in the rate of unsheltered homelessness.
  • The proposed rule changes to SNAP Time Limit Regulations and SNAP Categorical Eligibility Rules, requiring people to make the impossible choice between food and money for housing.

Rather than pursuing misguided and ineffective efforts that dehumanize people and undermine their ability to succeed, Trump could make far more of an impact by removing these deeply problematic rules from consideration, and instead focusing on proven solutions to prevent and reduce homelessness.

While the causes of California’s homelessness crisis are complex and deeply rooted in racial and economic inequality, one crucial part of the solution is housing people can afford. Homelessness will not end in California without a drastic increase in the supply of housing affordable to households with low incomes. The vast majority of funding for that kind of housing is controlled by the federal government.

Stable affordable housing—both with and without supportive services—ensures that vulnerable families and individuals don’t become homeless, assists the legions who have already lost housing, and allows chronically homeless individuals to receive the services they need to stay off the street. California’s dramatic housing shortage is catastrophic for lower-income people; it will take sustained and substantial funding to turn it around.

There is little chance the state can remedy the affordable housing shortage without a significant increase in federal resources. But rather than address the chronic underfunding of federal housing programs that are critical to serving people with the lowest incomes, the Trump administration is pursuing cuts. Rather than increasing the number of Housing Choice Vouchers available in California so eligible households aren’t stuck on years-long waiting lists, the administration remains focused on cutting HUD’s budget and applying problematic Fair Market Rent calculations that add to the challenge of voucher utilization. Rather than ensuring families are stably housed so that they can focus on improving their economic well-being, he remains focused on tearing families apart and punishing them for using the public assistance intended to prevent the many harms caused by poverty.

More policing is not a solution to homelessness. It is not a crime to be poor. It is not a crime to lack adequate shelter. What is criminal is a country as wealthy as ours, where there are resources to humanely address homelessness and knowledge of how to do so effectively, with a president who is more interested in using the homelessness crisis for political gain. We encourage and invite the president to change course and join us in the pursuit of real solutions.

Thousands of California renters with Section 8 vouchers can’t use them. What lawmakers are doing about it

As California struggles with a crisis in affordable housing, state lawmakers are trying to improve a severe shortage of housing available to renters who have federal Section 8 vouchers.

The vouchers allow tenants to pay only 30% of their income toward rent, with federal assistance to pay the rest. But most landlords do not accept tenants who pay with vouchers, saying they are too burdensome.

…“It’s billed as a golden ticket,” said Alexander Harnden, a policy advocate for the Western Center on Law and Poverty. “At this point, I describe it as a ticket to last summer’s movie. If you can find where it’s playing, that’s great. Otherwise it’s just a piece of paper.”

Read more 

Gov. Gavin Newsom talked big on housing. How has he stacked up so far?

When Gov. Gavin Newsom took office in January, armed with big promises and bold ideas to fix the state’s drastic shortage of homes, housing advocates were so hopeful they were almost giddy.

…“I think it’s good to have goals, but that amount of production I think would require production rates that we’ve literally never seen even at the most robust in California,” said Anya Lawler, a policy advocate specializing in land use for the Western Center on Law & Poverty. “So I don’t think it’s doable in that amount of time.”

Read more 

Locations

3701 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 208
Los Angeles, CA 90010
213.487.7211

1107 Ninth Street, Suite 700
Sacramento, CA 95814
916.442.0753

449 Fifteenth Street, Suite 301
Oakland, CA 94612
213.487.7211

Fax # 213.487.0242

Mail Contact us via email

Quick Links

AboutOur StaffAdvocacy ResourcesOur Client StoriesNewsroom

Support Western Center

Donate Now
4 Star Square Great Nonprofits

siteground

Site MapTerms Of UsePrivacy Statement

© 2019 Western Center on Law & Poverty, Inc. WCLP, WESTERN CENTER ON LAW & POVERTY and design are registered trademarks owned by Western Center on Law & Poverty, Inc. All rights reserved. WCLP ®

...