OPINION: Affordable housing is in a state of emergency. Let’s act accordingly.

by Rebecca Louie
San Diego Union Tribune
June 3, 2024
 
Louie is the president/CEO of Wakeland Housing and Development Corp. and the board chair of the San Diego Housing Federation. She lives in Encinitas.

In 2002, the San Diego City Council gathered together at Golden Hall to adopt a resolution declaring a “State of Emergency Due to the Severe Shortage of Affordable Housing in the City.”

I was working at SANDAG at the time and remember being so excited that this was happening. We’d been trying to sound the alarm on the impending housing crisis since the mid-’90s. It was clear even then that we weren’t building anywhere near enough housing to keep up with our job growth, especially housing that our lower income (but vital) workforce could afford. And we were starting to see the effects already — rents and housing prices were starting to increase rapidly along with overcrowding and overpayment.

So it was very exciting to finally get to see our elected officials come together at Golden Hall to ceremoniously adopt this resolution. They had heard us and were taking it seriously! I mean — it was being declared an emergency. Surely serious action was about to be taken.
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Well, fast forward 22 years and according to a recent report by the California Housing Partnership and released by the San Diego Housing Federation, we now have 134,500 low-income renter households in San Diego who cannot find an affordable home.

More than 50 percent of our older adults pay over half of their income to rent. And Golden Hall, site of our grand event, is being used as a homeless shelter to help meet the needs of the over 10,000 people experiencing homelessness in the county. While this breaks my heart, I’m not surprised. Because we in no way treated this as an emergency.

Imagine the emergency was a wildfire. But instead of rushing to put it out, we spent decades creating wildfire task forces, hiring wildfire consultants and commissioning wildfire studies (so many studies!), debating if they should be called wildfires or fires experiencing wildness, cutting funding to the fire department, etc. But meanwhile, the fire raged on. That is how we have approached the affordable housing emergency.

So am I furious and heartbroken about the current homelessness crisis? Yes. Am I surprised by it? Not really. It’s math. There are literally not enough homes. Finding affordable housing in San Diego is a game of musical chairs, with those who aren’t lucky enough to land a spot getting pushed out to the streets.

A common response to this is “well, if you can’t afford to live in San Diego then maybe you shouldn’t live here.” But what if that actually happened? The idea of a city where only the wealthy can afford to live appeals to many, but it isn’t practical.

We have a $1 billion a year tourism economy in San Diego. How successful will we be if our hotel and restaurant employees have to live in Tijuana or Temecula? It’s not sustainable.

Likewise, think about how many workers you rely on to get you through your day. Child care worker. Grocery store clerk. Daycare worker. Bartender (no judgment). Should they move out of San Diego? How far can people be pushed out before commuting to a $25ish an hour job stops making sense?

Not to mention, San Diego is their home. Many of them were born and raised here, with family ties and networks. Many are our younger people at the start of their careers. We want them here. That’s what makes a good city.

Think about our older adults on fixed incomes, living in this time of skyrocketing costs. The average monthly Social Security payment in San Diego is about $1,800. The average studio apartment is about $1,900. It is no wonder 30 percent of our homeless population is age 55 and over.

My company, Wakeland, builds and operates affordable housing, with many projects targeted to people who were homeless before coming to us, so I get to meet a lot of them and hear their stories. Without fail, I think, “This could happen to anyone.”

And yet — we still haven’t accepted this as a true emergency. In fact, we are putting less resources toward affordable housing than we have in the past, while simultaneously increasing spending on homelessness. It makes no sense. Affordable housing prevents homelessness. It should be our top priority if we really want to get people off our streets.