By Maureen Sedonaen and Jeffrey Clapp
It’s no secret that California – and the nation – are facing a brutal housing crisis. What is often missing from the conversation is a clear understanding of government’s responsibility, and potential opportunity, to drive real solutions. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the state budget unveiled by Governor Newsom this month.
California residents looking to buy a median-priced home need an annual income of at least $222,000 to do so. The majority of Californians spend far too much on housing: 55% of renters and 30% of homeowners spend more than 30% of their income to keep a roof over their heads.
The results are real and dire: families across the state are choosing between housing and food, housing and healthcare, housing and childcare.
Immediate, large-scale action is needed to fix this problem. Organizations like Habitat for Humanity Greater San Francisco are ready to build. We have development projects in the pipeline that our community supports.
What we need are the financial resources of government and targeted legislation to turn all these projects into reality.
Helping people buy homes is a very different calculus—with different and better results—than just helping people find affordable rental housing. Both are critically important, but the benefits of homeownership are truly astounding and have a ripple effect that can be felt across generations.
Families that own their home have better health outcomes, longer lives, children who do better in school, and a greater and tangible involvement in their communities, than renters. U.S. homeowners’ average net wealth is 400% higher than their renting counterparts.
Homeownership could be classified as a “best kept secret” in increasing the financial health and wellbeing of low-income Californians. While affordable rental housing is a much-needed support, ownership moves people out of poverty.
Of course, it’s no secret to those of us who work in this sector and see the benefits every day for families who become homeowners. But the profound advantages of homeownership over renting seem completely lost on too many outside the housing sector—including elected officials and those in government.
This is part of why homeownership solutions are blocked for so many California families. The politics of federal and state funding prioritize affordable rental housing over helping families buy their own homes and create upward mobility and stability.
The lack of support for this problem has widespread implications that go far beyond the struggles of individuals and families.
Communities suffer from the transience encouraged by rental housing. Local economies are deprived of the investment homeowners make and the stable supply of workers who set down roots for the long term. Children without stable housing live more disrupted lives with poorer educational outcomes, which prevents them from accessing high income-earning opportunities as they grow into the next generation of potential homebuyers. Families that are unable to build generational wealth struggle to contribute to societal wealth.
We need more production of housing and investments in families and communities. We need a path where families can matriculate naturally from rental to ownership. The subsidies should reflect this strategy.
This is why we were so disappointed to learn that last year Governor Newsom clawed back all the funding that had been allocated for the CalHome program, and he is proposing doing it again this year. CalHome is widely used by nonprofit developers like ours to support new home construction for ownership. This funding is essential to ensure that more families can thrive and build a secure foundation for the future.
We must come together to address this urgent problem. We need advocacy, citizen involvement, philanthropy, cooperation of cities and counties, and funding from state and federal sources. Full funding for CalHome is a critical piece of this joint effort and State Assembly members agree. Nearly half of the state’s 80 representatives have voiced their support.
Read the story in the Marin Independent Journal here.
Maureen Sedonaen is CEO of Habitat for Humanity Greater San Francisco. Jeffrey Clapp is interim executive director of Bolinas Community Land Trust.