Real estate experts around the Bay Area knew the region’s red-hot housing market was due for a cool down, but few expected the deep freeze brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.
Matt Schwartz, president and CEO of the California Housing Partnership: “People who were previously not in need of assistance are now going to need it. People who previously needed some assistance are going to need more, at least for an interim period. That’s something we’re all very concerned about. We had around 1.4 to 1.3 million households who were living without an affordable place in California. Now that number is going to grow.”
Matt Schwartz: “We are now at historically low interest rates. There is no better time for the state to borrow than today. So we want the state to think big about this, to think big about what it can get from Congress and what it can repurpose, but also to think about borrowing against the future. Because in moments of crisis like this, we cannot be bound completely by the requirement of a balanced budget or we will fail at addressing this crisis. We will have tens of thousands of new homeless folks who should never have become homeless.”