PD Editorial: Affordable housing isn’t only a state problem

America’s affordable housing crisis is getting worse, and federal efforts to increase the supply are falling short. That’s bad news in every state, but especially in California where housing and homelessness have been critical challenges for years.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office’s recent assessments of two Housing and Urban Development programs aimed at creating affordable housing weren’t good. The GAO conducts nonpartisan research on behalf of Congress and the American people, including performance reviews of federal programs.

First up was the Self-Help Homeownership Opportunity Program. SHOP provides grants to nonprofits that develop affordable housing for low-income buyers. California has been a beneficiary of its funding.

The GAO found that the program cannot keep up with demand. SHOP peaked in 2003, when it helped build nearly 2,500 units nationally. It’s gone downhill since. Today it supports hardly any new units, a few dozen at most. Yet demand for affordable housing has only gone up, something Californians looking to become homeowners know all too well.

HUD’s funding for the program has not kept pace with higher construction and land costs. The cost to build a home more than doubled from 1998 to 2021, and SHOP funding did not.

The second program, HUD’s Housing Trust Fund, has a different challenge. It supports production of rental units that are affordable to the lowest-income Americans. California receives more than $100 million per year.

The problem is that HUD cannot guarantee recipients are spending the money well because it has insufficient reporting, auditing and oversight protocols in place. The GAO warns that funds could be lost to fraud without delivering affordable units. That’s the last thing America needs when rents are way up, and the demand for affordable apartments is up with them.

The affordable housing shortfall remains shockingly large in California. Analyses by the California Housing Partnership found that the state needs more than 1.3 million affordable housing units. That shortfall includes homes that are naturally occurring in the marketplace — an increasingly rare find — and subsidized homes through programs like SHOP and the Housing Trust Fund. People who cannot afford rent or a mortgage payment slip into homelessness, exacerbating that inextricably intertwined crisis.

California lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom are trying to help with some bills passed this year.

One will rezone land owned by nonprofit colleges and religious institutions statewide to allow them to build affordable housing. The owners can avoid a lot of the local permitting red tape and strict environmental review. That means they can start building sooner, save on fees and bypass neighbors who freak out when they hear mention that “affordable housing” is going up.

Another bill extends a streamlined process for approving high-priority housing. Critically, however, it exempts environmentally sensitive and wildfire-prone areas. The last thing the North Bay needs is a rampant, unplanned housing development in the path of wildfires. Incoming Senate President pro tem Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg, told The Press Democrat editorial board that next year will likely see the return of a bill with very specific rules for development in high-risk fire zones.

America and California will not end the affordable housing crisis overnight, but if federal officials heed the GAO and California continues to pass smart laws, the nation can still turn things around.

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