A Job but No Place to Live
The lack of affordable housing is no longer limited to low-income Californians. Teachers, police officers, middle managers, high-tech employees and even some dot-com executives cannot afford to rent or own homes near their workplaces. As the housing crunch affects ever more workers, Gov. Gray Davis and the California Legislature are giving housing more of the attention it deserves.
In Silicon Valley, where the statewide housing problem is at its worst, some desperate workers pay $200 per month to rent sleeping space on a living room floor from 11 at night to 6 in the morning, no bathroom privileges included. Others sleep on buses because they can’t find an apartment they can afford. Still others crowd into homeless shelters, where up to 20% of occupants hold full-time jobs. Some, faced with rent increases of as much as $500 a month, just leave the state. Every major urban area in California is experiencing housing trouble that requires workers to live farther out, double up, rent unimproved garages or spend most of their take-home pay for a roof over their heads.
This issue has bipartisan appeal. In the state Senate, Republicans, including Sen. Jim Brulte (R-Rancho Cucamonga), and Democrats, including Sen. Richard Alarcon (D-Sylmar), have compromised on bills intended to create more housing. In the lower house, Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg (D-Sherman Oaks) led Democrats in proposing to spend more than $1 billion from the state surplus for down-payment assistance, multifamily housing, downtown rebuilding and affordable rental housing. Although neither side got everything it wanted, the efforts resulted in approval of the largest appropriation for housing in state history.
The budget, signed on the last day of June by Gov. Davis, includes $570 million for housing to help people buy their first homes, finance affordable-housing construction, rehabilitate low-income rental housing, provide more housing for farm workers and expand housing for homeless people.
Incentives and matching grants will encourage cities and counties to develop housing plans, increase the number of permits, provide roads and other infrastructure elements for new housing and improve code enforcement to keep older homes in good repair and make new housing last longer.
The gap between supply and demand widened over the past decade as new housing construction failed to keep up with population and job growth and as a sizzling economy pumped up prices for apartments and homes. At a time when U.S. homeownership is at its highest level ever, more than half of Californians rent because they can’t afford to own.
The housing shortage has discouraged prospective employees--from low-paid workers to CEOs--from accepting jobs in Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego and other booming markets, prompting employers to appeal to the Legislature for relief.
High housing costs are hurting corporate recruiting, while long commutes are denting productivity. Because these pressures could make companies less competitive, the influential California Chamber of Commerce has joined labor, nonprofit housing developers, lobbyists for poor renters and advocates for farm workers and homeless people to support legislation that would increase the supply from the top end to the bottom end of the market. Together, they have given housing issues political clout.
A healthier balance between jobs and housing will require building 250,000 new homes a year and greatly expanding the supply of apartments. Sacramento should speed additional development and rehabilitation with more legislation, targeted state funds and incentives that ease California’s housing crisis.
