Reyna Solis stands in the doorway of her trailer where she lives with her daughters, Jazmin Plata, 12, Vanessa Plata, 11, and Anna Plata, 8. The family sleeps in the LifeMove Safe and Supportive Parking lot in San Jose. Photographs by Erin BrethauerWhen the shimmering
It’s just a patch of concrete adjacent to a community center where the kids can shower and do their homework, with a caseworker on site for a few hours every night, and a rent-a-cop security guard who occasionally cruises by to keep an eye on things. But Amador says her family feels safer here than on the street by themselves.
It isn’t a failing economy that’s putting residents out on the streets, though. It’s a booming one. By almost every economic measure, the Bay Area is outperforming the rest of the nation. Together, the region’s nine counties boast a GDP of $748 billion — larger than Switzerland’s or Saudi Arabia’s — and an economy that’s growing at double the rate of the United States’ at large. Santa Clara County, home to San Jose, has a job-growth rate that’s twice the national one.
At its heart, California’s housing problem is one of scarcity: According to one analysis, the state has 3.5 million fewer homes than it needs to house all the people who live there. That gap was created over decades — largely as a result of the zoning policies of individual communities, under pressure from local residents. Randy Shaw, a longtime Bay Area housing advocate and author of the booksays the best way to describe the dynamics at play is to look at the city of Atherton.
Bearded and bespectacled, Wiener moved to the Bay Area in 1997, a 27-year-old gay man “coming to San Francisco for the same reason generations of LGBT people have come to San Francisco,” he says. He flew out on a Friday night to look for an apartment. Early Saturday morning, he attended his first open house and was stunned to find there was already a line snaking around the block.
At the start of the legislative session this past January, the housing committee introduced a slate of bills focused on streamlining approvals for new construction, protecting renters, funding affordable housing, and, most controversially, reforming zoning laws. Wiener’s top priority was SB50, an ambitious proposal that would prohibit cities from having zoning laws like Atherton’s.
It's like 'Grapes of Wrath'.
California doesn't have a 'housing crisis', it has a schizophrenic junkie crisis.
Because it's a huge, fricken state.
Because they don’t understand the law of supply and demand. If breathing was not involuntary they would all suffocate.
Greedy landlords
Is this a rhetorical question?