The WWGFH Summer 2023 Housing Digest
An occasional, highly-filtered and not even close to comprehensive review of interesting housing things in and for California housers
To celebrate summer, we’re experimenting with a Digest-type post where we cover worthwhile things to read from other sources, important subject areas we’re following, a reminder for WWGFH posts you may have missed, and some other tidbits. We miss anything? You like or don’t like this addition? Drop us a line.
Words Worth Reading
Southern California landlord: If we want to curb homelessness, we need renter protections
Ginger Hitzke | CalMatters
A housing developer named Ginger Hitzke bravely argues for rent control in CalMatters. Brava to her. We need more development professionals willing to step up and argue for change in their own industry. Talk about holding up a mirror….
Imagine a Renters’ Utopia. It Might Look Like Vienna.
Francesca Mari | The New York Times
We love us some social housing - more from us soon on this subject. If you haven’t already, read Francesca Mari’s beautiful piece on Vienna’s housing system in The New York Times. One nice thing about the current moment is that American housers seem to once again be open to ideas from abroad.
She lost her home. She doesn’t want to lose her city council seat
Alexei Koseff | CalMatters
Ignore Housing Twitter gloating about an Ojai councilmember who may lose her seat because she lost her home in her district. It is an important piece for all those now-very-expensive communities in California who are now victims of their own preservationism. Pro-housing folks may have a hard time avoiding a hate-read, but it is worth it.
Community Land Trusts are Working to Create New Homeowners
Claire Fahy | The New York Times
Love seeing the inimitable Steve King from Oakland Community Land Trust in a New York Times piece on the rise of Community Land Trusts (CLTs). Even better to see one of my favorite forms of Multifamily Homeownership (MHO) featured with its proper Black history included.
California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness
University of California San Francisco Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative
If my LinkedIn is any indication, everyone saw the drop of the landmark UCSF California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness. It’s worth digging into the details in the full report, especially because this work includes so many truths (if you don’t like your truths plural than stay away). One of the most important - how many people became homeless from an informal housing situation (49%) where they had no legal tenancy or ownership stake. When we argue about market v. affordable housing, we miss the vast world in-between. It’s clear from the report that a ‘housing first’ or ‘homelessness is a housing problem’ mentality isn’t enough. We need a complete housing perspective, one that understands all the ways in which people actually live - not just the narrow ways we imagine they should. This includes temporary housing, as well as interim housing. More on this to come.
Spaces We’re Watching
Homes are very expensive to buy. CNN has a new set of data visualizations if you don’t believe me.
(The wrong kind of) investors remain a problem. I will come back to this in a proper post, but from all-cash buyers to private equity to corporate landlords driving up rents and engaging in questionable practices, this is an issue for all housers to care about.
California Dream for All was too popular. That should be a sign we should scale it up, not down. I was a fan of this program from the beginning, having the State as a shared equity partner with homeowners - and remain one. It needs to radically grow and include all manner of MHO options, including CLTs. As I will write soon, an expansion of this program is also the pathway for Tenant and Community Ownership, part of our need to recognize that Homeownership + Tenant and Community Ownership = a pathway to real change.
We all need to understand more about insurance and the impacting of an already changing climate on housing. Especially with insurers leaving California, State action is becoming inevitable.
Did you notice Phoenix may have to stop growing because it’s running out of water?
Nice to see our friends in philanthropy creating funds with and for community ownership.
Mobile home parks are important in so many ways - as housing, as a symbol, as a way to create CLTs and MHO, also as a key site of vulnerability and exploitation.
Mobile homes are also part of the modular industry, a part of housing which has long been a dream for many and struggled to work on the ground in the United States. But I remain hopeful we will soon figure it out - and having HUD launch a new Office of Manufactured Housing is a step in the right direction.
I love the idea of right to counsel, but this article confirms a lot of my fears. Legal mandates that don’t create a system that provides the thing that it mandates isn’t a recipe for a better system. If you want to know why I have fears around ACA10 (Housing as Human Right in the State Constitution), this is it. Building a system with accessible legal assistance is essential to all forms of housing, both rented and owned and everywhere in between. Let’s take this as a lesson that for all parts of the housing system, we need to (re)build the system alongside the mandates.
Happy to see my favorite bill of the session, SB4, making its way through so far. SB4 streamlines affordable housing on land owned by religious organizations. I’m not the biggest streamlining person but I love bills like SB4 and last years AB2011 that can reshape the development of key infill sites. It’s the ‘what can be built where for whom’ part that is exciting. The one missing piece of SB4 and other bills like it is the ‘by whom’ and ‘who gets to own it’ parts, which is where social housing comes in. Speaking of which, wishing luck to both AB309 and SB555 and their supporters. I look forward to one day having a shared vision of social housing in California, no matter what happens in the remaining days of the session.
Other Stuff We’re Nerding Out On
It’s always a good time to check out the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies’ annual The State of the Nation’s Housing.
The Biden Administration unveiled a blueprint for a national Renter’s Bill of Rights. They also published a major homelessness plan. It’s amazing what the federal government can do on housing when it’s not led by someone trying to burn it to the ground.
Finally, Let’s Celebrate!
Doorway, the Bay Area’s new affordable housing portal
We’re celebrating the launch of Doorway, the Bay Area’s new affordable housing portal. Built by the new Bay Area Housing Finance Agency (BAHFA), alongside our favorite B Corp tech company Exygy + Google.org, this is one piece in the housing data infrastructure future that we wrote about last month. I’m excited for Doorway to grow and include all manners of MHO opportunities - and to eventually cover the whole state!