Housing Justice Plan
Affordable Housing, Tenant Rights & Ending Homelessness
We are facing a moral crisis in housing and homelessness in California.
We are experiencing unaffordable housing costs, increased evictions and gentrification, and an unprecedented rise in homelessness. We must begin advocating for policies that recognize the importance of holistic approaches to achieving housing justice. It is time that we prioritize the needs of the people in this district over the needs of for-profit developers. Without robust housing policy, we cannot hope to achieve equity and healing in our communities.
The issues in district 65
LA has the least affordable housing market in the US. According to the California Center for Jobs and the Economy, our district is considered severely cost burdened. We have the 5th lowest household median income, and over 52% of us are spending more than 30% on housing costs.
Even among individuals who qualify for public housing, accessing subsidized housing is difficult. There is an estimated waitlist of over 10 years to get a Section 8 voucher in LA; accessing units owned by local housing authorities also have multi-year waits. Many affordable units are becoming more expensive, and developers are more often building luxury apartments than affordable ones. Some estimates suggest that LA is already short over 500,000 affordable units to meet existing demand. We currently simply do not have the stock of affordable housing that we need to meet demand.
This affordability crisis is contributing to increased gentrification in our communities. This is another form of systemic racism and structural violence. Gentrification is exacerbated by different factors. Often times, our communities will fight for certain improvements for decades – from cleaner air to increased public transit infrastructure – and these improvements will in turn increase housing costs and draw in wealthier crowds from other areas, forcing many community members to leave. It is important to address how affordability and gentrification impact both households and communities.
Want to learn more? Check out these resources:
Many parts of District 65 face higher eviction rates than the rest of Los Angeles. Neighborhoods like Compton and Willowbrook experience 3-4 times the number of evictions as the LA average. These rates do not even account for informal evictions or households who leave their housing for fear of eviction. In California, over 1.5 million people have faced eviction proceedings in the past 3 years. There are many reasons someone might be evicted, including at-fault and no-fault evictions. At-fault evictions include when a tenant is unable to pay rent, whether because of rent increases or wage loss. No-fault evictions include when the eviction is not due to actions of the tenant but because of changes by the landlord.
Evictions have numerous negative impacts on individuals and households. Evictions negatively impact physical and mental health, including contributing to higher rates of depression and suicide. Many children experience disruption in their schooling which can contribute to lower school performances and less earning potential over the long-term. Evictions cause significant harm in our society.
Want to learn more? Check out these resources:
Eviction Lab‘s interactive map of eviction rates across the US
There are over 58,000 people experiencing homelessness across LA County. This includes many children; the LA Unified School District identified over 15,000 students. While this is an issue that affects everyone, it doesn’t impact everyone equally. Systemic racism plays a large role in our experiences of housing and homelessness. For example, while Black people only represent 9% of LA’s overall population, they account for over 1/3 of the homeless population. It is clear that homelessness it not just an individual’s issue, but a systemic one.
There are many reasons why someone might become homeless, including evictions, employment loss, emotional trauma, mental health, substance abuse, and more. Across the US, nearly 40% of people have less than $400 in savings. With exorbitant housing costs across LA and California, this means that many people are one paycheck away from homelessness.
Homelessness causes many traumas. For example, women experiencing homelessness are much more likely to experience gender-based violence. According to research by the Downtown’s Women Center, 91% of unhoused women have experienced physical or sexual abuse; nearly 50% of unhoused women had experienced violence within the last month. Even for women who elected to stay in shelters, 35% of them experienced physical or sexual abuse in the past year, contributing to the reason why over 1/3 of the women they spoke to felt unsafe in shelters. In addition, many people experiencing homelessness face other challenges and traumas. It is critical that we critically analyze what policies contributed to this growth and inequity in homelessness.
Want to learn more? Check out these resources:
The LA Homeless Services Authority report on Black people experiencing homelessness
The Downtown Women’s Center overview on violence against unhoused women
Our Plan
We need bold, comprehensive, and holistic policies to address our housing & homelessness crisis in LA and across California. Housing is a human right, and I am dedicated to championing policies that will ensure everyone has access to the housing they need and deserve.
We need to invest in increasing the affordable housing stock. Ultimately, in order to end homelessness and increase housing security, we need more affordable housing units. We need to get creative in how we can remove existing barriers to building housing, and we need to be firm in demanding the type of affordable developments that we know our community needs.
We cannot build housing without being intentional and pursuing a community process, however: we must invest in communities without furthering gentrification and displacing individuals. We need to be intentional in our developments, firm with strengthening tenant protections and rent control, and actively invest in local communities, including looking at social housing models. This cannot be done by politicians or developers alone: we need to actively and meaningfully collaborate with communities. The community must play a key role in deciding what this process looks like.
We know that we also must protect and enhance fair housing laws.We should be actively addressing our history of redlining, gentrification, and discrimination in housing. We should commission studies to analyze equity within housing and to help determine what best next steps are needed on state and local levels to actively address segregation in the housing stock.
Finally, we know we need to invest resources in ending homelessness. Building housing alone is not enough. We cannot separate our housing and homelessness platform from other community needs. Part of our solution for homelessness needs to include addressing the factors and traumas that both contribute to and are exacerbated by homelessness. We need healthcare for all, including robust mental health and substance abuse treatment services, for everyone. We need to build a robust green economy where individuals can find meaningful jobs. We need a robust public safety net. We need criminal justice reform. All of these issues are intricately tied and must be holistically addressed in order to make meaningful change around these issues.
