This year’s state budget authorized $2.9 billion to fund new and existing housing programs and $3.4 billion to assist individuals experiencing homelessness. While these investments are substantial, this allocation is not to scale for California’s growing 1.2 million housing-cost-burdened population.
According to the Roadmap Home 2030, California needs to invest $17.9 billion a year to have the capacity to create 1.2 million new homes and end homelessness. As the State Funding chart in the Partnership’s Housing Needs Dashboard illustrates, California has never come close to achieving this scale of investment in affordable housing.
The Housing Needs Dashboard State Funding Chart helps to explain how we have reached the housing and homelessness crisis we see today.
Considering the extraordinary budget surplus and numerous active initiatives from the Roadmap Home’s legislative plan, at this point, the state should be prioritizing larger efforts like Assembly Constitution Amendment 14 (Wicks), an amendment that would allocate 5% of the state budget to housing efforts and ACA 1 (Aguiar-Curry) which would give local governments the ability to raise local homelessness and housing infrastructure funding with a 55% vote, the same as is required for educational facilities.
As proposed by the Roadmap Home, California needs a long-term investment at scale if we truly wish to end the musical chairs nightmare for our state’s low-income renters and housing providers and leave the next generation in a better place than we are today.