Housing is the solution to homelessness: vote yes on Prop. 5

OPINION – Housing and homelessness are top of mind across California. Too many of us have trouble covering our housing costs and we worry about how many people are living in tents and RVs.

The fix may be complex, but it’s also quite simple: housing is the solution to homelessness. This year housing is on the ballot in California and voters have a chance to be part of this solution by voting yes on Proposition 5.

It’s not just a ballot measure for me – it’s personal. I know what it’s like to be unhoused.

Back in 2015, my family and I were unhoused for a year. It started after reporting black mold in our apartment that was making my daughter severely sick; our landlord started refusing my rent payments and evicted us. For an entire year, my husband, our two young children, and I moved between sleeping in hotels, tents, abandoned buildings, and friends’ couches.

There was no affordable housing available in Sacramento. Even the shelters wouldn’t take us because my daughter’s list of allergies was considered a liability. Fortunately, we had applied for Section 8 housing two years prior, and after a year of hell being unsheltered, we were profoundly lucky to be awarded Section 8 by lottery, after only 2 years of waiting. Many others we knew had been waiting upwards of 15 years for housing.

I can tell you first-hand that being unhoused is rarely a choice. It is a choice made for you by a broken housing system. There are years-long wait lists. The shelters are full and in unsafe and unhealthy conditions. With a lack of renter protections to keep families in their homes, and an extreme lack of affordable housing, families have no choice but to become unhoused.

A study from UCSF confirmed that lack of affordable housing is a key reason that so many people in our state experience homelessness, and the situation isn’t getting better. Experts agree that when someone spends more than one-third of their income on housing that they are considered “housing-burdened,” sometimes overwhelmingly so.

Today, well over half of California renters are stuck paying more than a third of their paycheck on housing. That comes out to at least 3.2 million people significantly struggling to make ends meet because of how much it costs to have a place to live.

If housing that my family could afford had been available, we would not have been unhoused for that year. We need to make it easier for local governments to fund housing that low- and middle-income people can afford.

You’ve probably heard the lies and scare tactics about Proposition 5. Let me be clear that this is not about property taxes – and the big corporate interests telling you that they aren’t concerned about your well-being. In reality, Prop. 5 simply empowers voters to make more affordable housing available by lowering the threshold for passing affordable housing bonds from 66 to 55%.

California is a massive state and our communities vary widely. Voters should have the ability to decide what’s best for our families and our communities. Prop. 5 will let you and me vote on whether and how our cities and counties invest in more affordable housing. It’s about giving voters a say and helping communities create more housing that low- and middle-income Californians can afford.

Only by creating more permanent, affordable housing will we eliminate homelessness.

The longer we wait to provide more affordable housing across income levels, the more people will be unhoused, and the more that our friends, families, coworkers, and neighbors will struggle. We have a huge opportunity in this election, and we deserve to have a say in future elections.

Pinky Toney is a member of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), a mother of two, and a long-time resident of Sacramento.