How California’s Housing Crisis Could Hit Seniors Hard

What in the world does it take to prioritize getting the homeless off the sidewalk? The Dems are letting people rot on the sidewalk. Why? American Dystopia. It's a real bad look. Make America housed again.

Senior here, hanging on by my fingernails in a great little cottage- less than 500 square feet. The biggest culprit is Airbnb, taking away long term rentals for people like me- mostly so big investors can profit and wreck the neighborhood. Boo, hiss to the profit-at-all-costs motive.

Not a word about the competition for affordable housing between the elderly mentioned in the article and the millions of undocumented immigrants flooding California. Where will they live? And whose apartment will they rent?

I am sad to read so many poorly thought out pieces of “advice” to the older adults in this story. I am 72 and -fortunately-in good health with more than adequate income; however, even I fear the future -albeit just a bit-given current economic trends. I think more humble thoughts are in order. Hopefully, most of those commentators will reach my age. At that point, they will be forced to adopt a more measured approach.

California has enacted laws making it a sanctuary for unauthorized immigrants, most of whom live in affordable housing. The PEW Research Center has a 2/5/18 article titled "U.S. unauthorized immigrant population estimates by state, 2016” which said that California had more than any other state. Out of an estimated 10,700,000 unauthorized migrants, 2,200,000 were living in California, making up 5.6% of the state’s population. Professors at Yale thought the PEW estimate of unauthorized immigrants was too high so they conducted their own research. To their consternation, they found that there was a 95% probability that there were between 16.2 and 29.5 million migrants living here, in 2016, without authorization. The Yale mean of 22.1 million is over twice the PEW estimate. It suggests that the number of unauthorized migrants in California is well over 10% of the state’s population, and is taking up a lot of its affordable housing. If California wants citizens and legal residents to find affordable housing, it could repeal its sanctuary laws.

I have served as Chair of the California Assembly Housing & Community Development Committee, representing most of the city of San Diego. Over the last 10 years the city has converted approx 10,000 "affordable" housing units to "market rate." The result: today we have approx 9-10,000 homeless residents in San Diego. Many of these unsheltered people are older adults on fixed incomes. Many lost their housing due to illness, death of a family member & their income, and similar situations that occur as people try to age in place. As for the "rent one of the rooms" comments: affordable housing complexes often base rents on a resident's income, age, number of people/unit, etc. IOW: adding a 2nd person to her apartment might inadvertently trigger additional rent increases that offset the potential benefits- or disqualify her altogether. Re:"California is expensive: just move"- moving is also expensive, and often requires coming up with a first & last month rental payment, security deposit, background/credit check fee, movers. etc.: all potential hardships for someone on a fixed income. Do we need more affordable housing? Absolutely. Will it be built in time to help people like Ms. Jenkins- sadly, probably not. A better solution has been identified by the city of Santa Monica: they determined that simply giving older adults on fixed incomes an additional $200/month would prevent many from becoming homeless with all the related hardships & heartbreaks.

I can relate. After spending much of my life in California, the last 18 years in Southern California, my wife and I moved to Southern Colorado in September 2018, one of the best decisions we've ever made. The reason was simple: California's insane cost of housing. We'd spent more than $300,000 in rent from 2012 to mid 2018. Both in our early 60s, we'd had it with being tenants and always at the mercy of a landlord. We bought a lovely 116-year-old Victorian here in Pueblo for less than $260,000, a house that would have easily cost $900,000 or more where we lived in California. There are a lot of wonderful amenities here and we're within easy driving distance of New Mexico, Zion National Park, Denver, the Rocky Mountains and many other places. And SoCal is only a 2-hour flight away.

The solution to a housing shortage is to build more housing. That means relaxing zoning laws, and repealing the laws that let people prevent construction. In California the people who own houses banded together to prevent the construction of more, multiplying prices and rents. Subsidies only shift the burden, helping their recipients at the cost of others. They may be justified in some cases, but cannot solve the problem.

Ms. Jenkins is living in a two bedroom apartment, apparently alone. Perhaps she could take on a room mate who is similarly financially stressed. One problem with rent control, is you wind up with cases like the retired woman in New York City living in a 3 bedroom for $28 a month. A family who needed one couldn't find one because an old lady held onto it. Who is going to build any new rental housing with rent control looming? The solution to a problem of rental housing shortage can't be to choke off new supply, and incentivize taking units out of the rental market. We have a huge problem coming. Few have saved enough for retirement. It's a problem to be faced by the entire society, not foisted off on rental property owners. If for no other reason that economists of all stripes agree it doesn't work.

Democracy and Capitalism do not include the right to live in San Francisco or Beverly Hills in places the poor or even the dying Middle Class cannot afford without Government help. Sorry for the bad news ! Please stop dreaming and fawning about your rights, and, and move to an affordable area. All Socialism and Communism bring, is the money held by the elites who are officials, and everybody else share the crumbs. Plenty of (former) rich people in the camps. When I got up in the morning as a child, my father was at work. When he finished supper, we went to sleep watching TV - Archie Bunker and Ralph Cramdon were favorites, and Ed Sullivan. By 30, I owned my own company and had a USC degree that I paid for with my summer wages. I owned a company because I could not find a job. I learned the hard way, while lots of people my age and older smoked, drank and wasted their money. My oldest son as an adult told me that he still cannot bring himself to order anything but water at a restaurant. I bought a home for $38,250 with a loan from my dad, moved when I need to and upgraded when I could, and make more than my dad but less than my sons. Simple formula - spend less money than you make, don't eat out a lot (Costco may make chickens extinct) and always remember that a good job doesn't love you back. The rich are the rich, and you won't join them by whining about your race or anything else. We fell sorry for you - got it - my family was in Sweden when slaves were freed.

Perhaps the reporter could share the COLA rec'd since the last rent adjustment. What I'm seeing with the elders in my family is that their COLA is higher than what the young adults in nongovermental jobs are seeing in an annual raise.

This is not a solution for the bigger problem, but Ms. Jenkins could rent out one bedroom of the two in the apartment to a subtenant. Change like that is hard, especially as one gets older and more comfortable with habits. But from a financial perspective, it would provide Ms. Jenkins with financial security for the rest of her days.

California is a very expensive place to live, especially the bay area. This is a big country, and we shouldn't expect everyone to be able to live in the most expensive locations. There are many more affordable cities in America to live in if you can't afford it here, no reason to be on the street in CA when other options exist.

What progressives miss is that people respond to incentives. They do it when they advocate for public schools but send their kids to private schools. I know that when I am ready to move In two years I will be deciding whether to put my house up for rent or whether to sell it. If rent control goes in I will sell. One less rental unit on the market.

Has the City given any thought of finding ways to convert some of these senior rentals to Tenant Owned coops?

In other news a former Home Depot founder willing to throw almost his entire fortune at a reelection campaign and a billionaire hedge fund guy willing to spend a hundred million on his own campaign for that same office. One can only imagine how that kind of money could be used to make thousands of people's lives just a tad bit easier, especially as they try to enjoy their golden years.

I feel for Ms. Jenkins, but we can't ignore the developers' perspective either. Operating costs DO increase every year, especially in California: property taxes, liability insurance, utilities, earthquake insurance, capital improvement costs, etc all go up year after year. Raising her rent $70 hardly seems unreasonable when you consider these rising costs. That residents expect rent to be frozen is completely unrealistic. The harder these onerous regulations make it for developers to turn a profit, the less likely they'll be to build affordable housing like the complex Ms. Jenkins lives in. At the end of the day, the business side needs to work.

Undoubtedly, the aging of the homeless in most major urban cities in CA will see elderly demographic increase - those between 60-80 years of age. With limited income and rising rents, the elderly will be unable to afford the basics - As of March 2018, SSA data shows that the average retirement benefit was $1,409.91 a month, or about $16,919 a year.