California is the epicenter of the tech industry and the wealthiest, most progressive state in the union, but homelessness is surging — and no one can agree on how to fix it. Why can't the state solve its housing crisis?
Reyna Solis stands in the doorway of her trailer where she lives with her daughters, Jazmin Plata, 12, Vanessa Plata, 11, and Anna Plata, 8. The family sleeps in the LifeMove Safe and Supportive Parking lot in San Jose. Photographs by Erin BrethauerWhen the shimmering
It’s just a patch of concrete adjacent to a community center where the kids can shower and do their homework, with a caseworker on site for a few hours every night, and a rent-a-cop security guard who occasionally cruises by to keep an eye on things. But Amador says her family feels safer here than on the street by themselves.
It isn’t a failing economy that’s putting residents out on the streets, though. It’s a booming one. By almost every economic measure, the Bay Area is outperforming the rest of the nation. Together, the region’s nine counties boast a GDP of $748 billion — larger than Switzerland’s or Saudi Arabia’s — and an economy that’s growing at double the rate of the United States’ at large. Santa Clara County, home to San Jose, has a job-growth rate that’s twice the national one.
At its heart, California’s housing problem is one of scarcity: According to one analysis, the state has 3.5 million fewer homes than it needs to house all the people who live there. That gap was created over decades — largely as a result of the zoning policies of individual communities, under pressure from local residents. Randy Shaw, a longtime Bay Area housing advocate and author of the booksays the best way to describe the dynamics at play is to look at the city of Atherton.
Bearded and bespectacled, Wiener moved to the Bay Area in 1997, a 27-year-old gay man “coming to San Francisco for the same reason generations of LGBT people have come to San Francisco,” he says. He flew out on a Friday night to look for an apartment. Early Saturday morning, he attended his first open house and was stunned to find there was already a line snaking around the block.
At the start of the legislative session this past January, the housing committee introduced a slate of bills focused on streamlining approvals for new construction, protecting renters, funding affordable housing, and, most controversially, reforming zoning laws. Wiener’s top priority was SB50, an ambitious proposal that would prohibit cities from having zoning laws like Atherton’s.
At the heart of the argument against SB50, from both ends of the economic spectrum, is a desire for “local control” and a belief that the people closest to the problem can diagnose it more accurately than lawmakers far removed from these communities. But arguments against a top-down measure like SB50 run up against the fact that cities, left to their own devices, have not built enough housing. And California’s problem just keeps getting worse.
It’s unusual for the head of one committee to single-handedly spike a piece of legislation, especially if it’s the top priority of another committee head in your own party. To Lane and others, Portantino’s decision signified something more than Democrat-on-Democrat violence.
Senate pro tem Toni Atkins insists that even without Portantino’s shelving it, SB50 didn’t have the votes. “I’m sure there are members who didn’t want to vote on this bill,” she says, “or were not ready to.” But SB50 isn’t dead yet — it will be under consideration again in January. Though if political pressure around it was high this year, it will be even higher in 2020, when a large share of state legislators will be up for re-election.
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