Housing Affordability is a Regional Issue in the Bay Area, and it Requires a Regional Cross-Sector Response
Housing is a serious issue in the Bay Area. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, at least half of Bay Area renters were rent burdened, meaning 30 percent or more of their income was needed to cover their rent; more than a quarter were severely rent burdened, meaning 50 percent or more of their income was needed to cover their rent. Black, Latinx and Native American renters in the Bay Area are the most likely to be represented by these statistics. Seventy-nine percent of Bay Area residents identify housing affordability as a big problem in their area — a higher percentage than any other area in California. The San Francisco Bay Area has the third largest ― and one of the fastest growing ― population experiencing homelessness in the country.*
Tomiquia Moss, a Bay Area advocate for housing affordability, knows the statistics. Through years of leading efforts in housing, public policy and community development in both the public and nonprofit sectors all over the Bay Area, Moss understands the importance of sustainable housing better than most. She has seen firsthand the communities, families and individuals impacted. And it was through her housing and development work that Moss began to notice a problem in how organizations and government bodies traditionally approach solving homelessness and housing affordability. The problem, like the data, is regional, but the responses have mostly been siloed and local.
“We were housing people outside their home counties, wherever housing was available and affordable,” says Moss. “We were housing families as far away as Sacramento because that’s what they could afford. They needed support no matter where they ended up in the region. That’s when I started to see the need for strategies that cross geographies.”
JULY 2020
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All Home also works with partners to raise awareness of underlying causes of housing insecurity, such as racial inequities — a factor that has become even more apparent in the wake of COVID-19, the ensuing economic fallout and the recent protests against police brutality and systemic racism.
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“The biggest indicator of someone becoming homeless is whether they’ve experienced homelessness in the past,” says Moss. “We want to look at economic and social mobility, not just shuffle people in and out of temporary housing and shelters.”
All Home uses a four-pronged approach: preserving and building affordable housing for people with extremely low income; protecting renters and fostering long-term self-sufficiency and
WE WANT TO LOOK AT ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL MOBILITY, NOT JUST SHUFFLE PEOPLE IN AND OUT OF TEMPORARY HOUSING AND SHELTERS.
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Like All Home, the Partnership for the Bay’s Future also sees the housing crisis as a regional issue that needs to be addressed as such on a policy and advocacy level. The Partnership uses innovative financing tools to create models and approaches that yield solutions, a policy fund that can help push changes and a policy working group that pulls from leaders across sectors to work on a regional and state level.
“If you think of how we live, we live in a region,” says Bell. “It’s rare to find someone who lives in a city and works in the same city and shops in the same city. The Partnership starts from that approach.”
Bell says that the efforts of organizations like All Home and alliances like Partnership for the Bay’s Future are critical at this moment, with the pandemic and the resulting economic disruption that has put even more pressure on the region’s severe housing crisis.
“Right now we have an eviction moratorium, and people who have lost jobs are being protected by unemployment benefits,” says Bell. “Both of those will end. Then we’ll have hundreds of thousands in the region who won’t be able to pay rent. It’s a ticking time bomb with no solutions from the state or from Bay Area cities and counties. We’ve been working to spur conversation toward a long-term solution, because time is short.”
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Part of Moss’s answer is All Home, a nonprofit formed last fall with funding and input from six area investors, including the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), to advance regional solutions across the nine-county Bay Area. All Home works to coordinate policy and government funding efforts between municipal, county, regional and statewide government agencies to ensure that laws and tax dollars are being used most effectively. For instance, this June saw the launch of the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority to provide affordable housing infrastructure through the cooperation of the Association of Bay Area Governments and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.
Moss, the founder and chief executive of All Home, and her team also foster collaboration between regional nonprofits, philanthropy and a community advisory council made up of individuals with lived experience of homelessness to make sure services are efficient and provide actual solutions for the entire spectrum of need, from the chronically homeless to the housing insecure. The goal is not only to create more economic mobility opportunities for people but also to attack the crisis at its roots by disrupting the cycles of poverty and homelessness.
1/2
3rd
of Bay Area renters are rent burdened, or spending more than 30% of their income on rent.
largest and fastest growing homeless population in the U.S. is found in San Francisco.
economic mobility; advocating for government policy on sustainable housing that gives the region a louder single voice when appealing to the state and federal governments; and linking resources and data systems that can easily cross jurisdictions.
“We must examine everything we do with a racial equity lens,” says Moss. “All of the solutions that we employ to combat homelessness and housing insecurity must aim to reduce the disproportionate impacts for Black and Brown people in the homeless population. We will not be able to end homelessness if we don’t address structural racism.”
WE will not be able to end homelessness if we don't address structural racism.
Another area organization focusing on social inequality as it pertains to housing affordability and homelessness is the Partnership for the Bay’s Future, a collaborative regional effort to address challenges in housing and economic opportunity. Housing is at the core of the Partnership’s mission, especially in terms of advocacy and policy to protect tenants, preserve affordable homes that currently exist and build the homes the region will need in the future. It is apparent to anyone who has seen the housing problem in these communities firsthand that race is inextricably linked to the issue.
“All you have to do is walk the streets with eyes wide open to see who is most affected,” says Judith Bell, chief impact officer of the San Francisco Foundation, which is a founding member of Partnership for the Bay’s Future. “Those are African Americans, Latinx and Native Americans. We have to start with those individuals who are most impacted.”
of Bay Area residents say housing affordability is a big problem in their area.
79%
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*Data sourced from Bay Area Equity Atlas, Public Policy Institute of California, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
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