California's Housing Middle

Our new report shows that middle income housing is a racial justice issue. It's also critical to building a coalition that can win.

Last week, my client and partner (and friends) California Community Builders (CCB)¹ released a report we authored together entitled: California’s Missing Middle: Middle-Income California is Large, Diverse and Left Out of the Housing Conversation. We wanted to know the answer to a simple question - who exactly is moderate and middle income California?

Why You Should Care: Middle Income California is Majority BIPOC

The answer (which is receiving some nice press coverage²) is pretty straightforward. The 13.2 million Californians who fall into this middle income box are 61% BIPOC. If you thought middle income = white, it does not, and has not for some time. This is true not only for people who earn between 80-120% of Area Median Income (AMI), a group covered by many state housing programs. It holds true for folks between 120-160% and 160-200% of AMI. 

AMI Band Breakdown and Definitions

61% of the 13.2 million Middle-Income Californians are BIPOC. Source: California Community Builders

This fact alone makes middle income housing a racial justice issue in my mind, even without any data on how this group is doing. When you add in low homeownership rates, astronomical housing prices, and consistent losses of middle income population - to other states or to lower income brackets - and you have a situation worth paying attention to for anyone concerned about racial justice in housing.

What this report shows

The report is a deep dive into the racial demographics of moderate and middle-income California, people who earn between 80% and 200% of AMI. The report is full of interesting (and beautifully rendered) data on the demographics of the ‘missing middle’.³

Source: HOPE Tool

We provide regional breakdowns, which help show that a BIPOC-majority middle is common throughout the State’s major regions, and struggles in the housing market everywhere, not just on the coast. We provide an overview of state and local housing programs for middle income Californians, and in general try to give housers and non-housers alike an introduction to this relatively forgotten corner of housing policy. We include discussion of the limits of AMI bands - we use them because they are the law, not because they are helpful to housing policy - and the many research and policy issues which remain blank spots on the map.

Number one in my mind is the relationship between Californians above and below 80% of AMI. We treat these as very separate categories but we don’t understand to what extent people go back and forth over this line, live in mixed families and mixed neighborhoods, etc. This is a very powerful line in terms of housing access, eligibility, finance and especially politics, but it is arbitrary and we don’t understand it in any real way.

This is a report that I have been working to bring into the world for a long time. I suspected that middle income California was majority BIPOC, but I had no proof - AMI bands suck to work with, and it is only because of the data science brilliance of Alex Ramiller and Issi Romem that we are able to bring this report to you.⁴

It is my hope that some racial justice advocates will see the stark numbers in this report and realize that they need to expand their focus into middle income.

Building a Coalition That Can and Will Win

But I know that this won’t convince many others whose housing advocacy focuses exclusively below 80% of AMI, or even lower. I fully understand where they come from. We don’t shy away from the facts about low-income California, that group below 80% of AMI which include Extremely Low Income and Very Low Income Categories. This group is bigger (17.5 million). It’s even more BIPOC percentage wise. It’s much more likely to be housing cost burdened. On average, their housing situation is worse. 

But reforming California’s housing system can’t fall into the trap that so many Americans fall into, be they left, right or center - focusing on who is most deserving, or most in need.  We constantly try to build programs, and then make them limited or exclusive or ‘targetted’. This means that they have very limited political support, and either don’t get off the ground or get started and peeled away. While I appreciate the moral value in targeting assistance to those most in need, it simply doesn’t work politically, or in many cases, practically.

So What’s Next?

The single most important number in this report is not 61%. It is 30,700,000. That is how many Californians live below 200% of AMI.

37,000,000 Californians live below 200% of AMI.

The reason why Singapore and Vienna are successful is that they serve this whole range, each according to their needs and interests and where they are in their lives. This massive group, a super majority pretty much every place in the world, is the kind of super majority you need to reform the housing system and build real and lasting support for truly transformative housing policy. When most Californians can see how they are supported by housing policy and the housing system, then we will get real change, that ‘political will’ that so many housing ideas call for and can’t deliver.

I hope that advocates for both low- and middle-income Californians see that building this coalition - which has never really existed in California - as the only path forward for real change. Unless and until we build this majority in housing, we will not fix our broken system for anyone who isn’t wealthy or high income or both.

1. If you missed it, check out Episode 3 of Housing After Dark featuring CCB CEO Adam Briones.

2. Which is wonderfully receiving some nice press coverage from outlets like KQED and The Sacramento Bee.

3. Special acknowledgement of our own Tina Lee and the inimitable Michelle Nazzal for incredible work on the design.

4. Issi built the HOPE Tool which underlies the report. The report weaves together public data on demographics, housing and employment across 20 years in California. Much more is possible with this tool.