Tag: housing

California needs to dramatically increase the number of homes we are building in order to shelter the nearly 40 million people who live here – 3.5 million new homes to be exact, including apartments, multi-unit buildings, mixed use, etc.

What is California doing about its sky-high housing prices? Just ask the state’s housing chiefs. In this special edition of the California Housing Crisis Podcast, The Los Angeles Times’ Liam Dillon and CalMatters’ Manuela Tobias interview Lourdes Castro Ramírez, secretary of the Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency; Gustavo Velasquez, director of the California Department of Housing & Community Development; and Tiena Johnson Hall, executive director of California’s Housing Finance Agency.

Housing. It’s an issue full of inequities that continue to impact minority and Black families in California. Whether it was redlining in the 1930s, a discriminatory practice of denying financial services to residents of certain areas based on their race or ethnicity, or racist language embedded in property records, people of color have battled housing inequality for far too long.

The Department of Veterans Affairs has expanded the Shallow Subsidy initiative and will grant  $200 million to 238 nonprofit organizations across the country and territories to provide housing rental assistance to extremely and very low-income Veteran households eligible under VA’s Supportive Services for Veteran Families program.

As millions of renters stare down the end of California’s eviction moratorium — and stories of the thousands of evictions that have taken place despite the moratorium are learned — we can clearly see the short- and long-term effects of the pandemic on Californians. It has crystallized just how many Californians decide whether they can pay rent or buy groceries, despite living in the wealthiest state in the country.