How California can slow homelessness through legislation

RENTAL ASSISTANCE BILL

Conservative pundits and politicians love California’s homelessness crisis.

For many of them, the sight of people living on the streets doesn’t inspire an instinct to help. It inspires a twisted glee. They see an opportunity to frame progressive policies as disastrous on Fox News.

One can only imagine how these ghouls feel about the rising percentage of Latinx people among Californians without a roof over their heads, considering the Trump-inspired surge in sadism toward Latinos.

That group was experiencing one of the most drastic increases in homelessness. The causes were not progressive policies, as right-wing commentators claim, but decades of institutional racism.

Fortunately, Gov. Gavin Newsom can lessen their burden. It’s the right thing to do. It’s also smart politics.

The governor should champion the House California Challenge Program, or AB 2817, which would provide $5 billion over five years in rental subsidies for people who are homeless or on the brink of it. Advocates believe it could house 50,000 people in the first year alone.

Of course, Republicans would attack the move as more of the same: “enabling” people to be lazy and indulgent of vices. But in reality, it could be lifesaving for Latina breadwinners such as Maria Cibrian.

A 64-year-old Californian from Mexico who works as a full-time caregiver, she earns about $1,000 a month — barely enough to pay rent on the one-bedroom apartment.

For other expenses, she has a side hustle: selling homemade desserts. She worries whenever she sees the news reports about a rise in the number of homeless people. “I think to myself that I might someday be in their shoes,” she told me.

AB 2817, introduced by Assembly Majority Leader Eloise Gómez Reyes and Assemblywoman Luz Rivas, caps rental assistance at “reasonable rent,” or twice the fair market rent. It would also provide incentives for landlords to rent to prospective tenants in the program. Currently, only 1 in 5 people eligible for federal housing choice vouchers actually receive them.

About two-thirds of California’s homeless population is newly homeless. Families are the fastest-growing group.

AB 2817 aims to allow cities, counties, nonprofits and other providers to connect homeless people to permanent housing quickly and flexibly. Reyes is prioritizing the bill and budget request.

In Los Angeles County, Latinos are thought to make up 35% of the homeless population. But that’s most likely an undercount, because many skip traditional homeless shelters and encampments.

They’re the least likely of all groups to seek homeless services because of language barriers and fears about being deemed a “public charge,” which could hurt the immigration cases of those who lack citizenship.

No single approach is going to solve this complex problem. But the rental assistance bill, if carefully implemented, would be a lifeline for people like Z., a 41-year-old Californian from Nicaragua who requested not to use her full name because she feared losing custody of her daughters.

A single mother, she lost the house she was renting during the pandemic because her hours as a janitor were cut. “If there was money for rent, there was no money for food,” she told me. “If there was money for food, there was no money for rent.” She didn’t know she qualified for temporary emergency rental assistance during the pandemic. She found a cramped room in a house with strangers, but she’s still struggling. “I don’t have anything in the refrigerator to feed my girls,” she texted me this week.

The state has invested billions in the creation and conversion of new affordable housing units. But without more rental subsidies for people to move into those spaces as well as into existing market-rate units, hardworking moms like Z. will continue to end up on the streets — where right-wing media vultures can revel in their suffering.