Low-Wage Families Must Share Housing

Your June 24 editorial, “Building Low-Income Housing,” was very welcome, as was the recent Orange County Grand Jury report on affordable housing.

Unfortunately, even if each city complies with the editorial’s recommendation to commit to providing shelter to all, we cannot and will not be successful in creating decent housing for a great percentage of our work force that earns $10 an hour or less. It is doubtful that any more than 100 units a year will be built for incomes of less than $20 an hour.

We must acknowledge that this housing will not be built, and plan accordingly. Every bureaucrat, every elected official, every business owner and every church leader must know that poor working families will have to live in garages or share apartments in order to obtain any shelter whatsoever.

The federal and state governments must take over where local government has failed. I know this is distasteful to those who fight for limited government, but children are sick and uneducated because of their deplorable, Third World living conditions. At what price limited government?

The federal and state governments should severely sanction local governments that do not house their labor force. We have achieved considerable action from government use of price and taxing mechanisms to achieve a greater public purpose. The federal and state governments must seek those mechanisms and sanctions.

Local government is powerless, and the sooner we enlist it in the plan to deal with double-occupancy housing rather than housing production, the closer we will be to the housing solution.

Since no housing is going to be built, low-wage employees must learn to use the existing housing more efficiently by sharing apartments. That is the only viable housing solution over the next few years. People follow the jobs, and Orange County produces 20,000 new jobs annually paying $20,000 a year or less.

Allen P. Baldwin

Executive Director, O.C. Community Housing Corp.