In 1980, I reported on Sacramento’s “public drunks.” Most of them, a few hundred in total, lived in makeshift hotels. But some slept “in the weeds”.
I walked the wooded banks of the rivers that converge on the capital and found only a few dozen places where men had lain down on simple mats of cardboard or newspaper. There were no tents or camps.
The word “homeless” was rarely used then. It didn’t appear in my article for the Sacramento Bee.
In 1982, in the midst of a recession, newcomers who had lost their jobs began to appear in the weeds. In 1985, after three years of reporting on the subject, I co-wrote one of the first books on contemporary homelessness. In 1988, I spent a week hiking 10 miles along the banks of the Sacramento River and found 125 elaborate camps. It was new.
I returned to Sacramento more recently amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Now tent cities in the woods along rivers stretched as far as the eye could see, rivaling those photographed by Dorothea Lange during the Great Depression. The most recent federally mandated survey found there were more than 5,000 homeless people in the city.
I can trace many of our modern “doom loops” back to the 1980s. The roots of our ongoing struggles against police brutality and sexual violence were present in the stories I covered then. Meaningful gun control measures could have prevented the proliferation of mass shootings over the past four decades. And pro-housing policies could have negated the presence of today’s tent cities.
I have felt despair for a long time, especially because of the homelessness crisis. In the wake of Ronald Reagan’s election, I criticized conservatives for abandoning the poor. I believed that my journalism and that of others could change policy, perhaps even inspire a New Deal-style response, equal to the challenge. Such was my naivety.
The fault, I have come to realize, also belongs to those whom we could describe as “good liberals”.
In 1980, baby boomers were in their first decade of homeownership in places like Silicon Valley and the New York suburbs of Westchester County. They quickly became NIMBYs, vehemently opposing affordable housing in their neighborhoods. Many were Clinton Democrats. They then planted “Black Lives Matter” signs on their lawns. The message was hollow: we support you; but doesn’t live near us.
Baby boomers, especially if they were white, were able to buy houses, and then they shut everyone else out. They saw their lawns and home equity grow. I was one of them.
In 1981, at age 24, I bought my first house. At a price of $70,000, it cost less than three times my annual salary of $25,000, roughly the median income in Sacramento County. If we only account for inflation, the value of the house would be $218,000 four decades later, and my salary would be $78,000.
The median household income in the county today is approximately $84,000, not far from what inflation would predict. But Zillow estimates that my old house is now worth $578,000, more than double what can be attributed to inflation. My annual salary would have to be over $190,000 to be able to buy the house as easily as it was back then. This is what the children and grandchildren of baby boomers are facing.
Much has been made of the more than 60 housing bills passed by the Legislature and signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom last year. The legislation will streamline the approval of housing in cities that fail to meet their goals, limit the use of environmental laws to block affordable housing, allow developers to build more densely when including affordable housing, and allow faith-based organizations to build housing on their land. , among other measures.
But that is not enough. Politicians need to be more aggressive in wresting control of zoning from cities.
As of 2018, State Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) has repeatedly attempted to advance bills that would have overridden local zoning to allow taller, denser apartment buildings near public transportation and job centers. His Democratic colleagues blocked them.
Even less ambitious pro-housing bills often suffer a similar fate in Sacramento. Last year, Sen. Anna Caballero (D-Salinas) proposed legislation that would have made it easier to approve small “starter homes” in areas designated for single-family housing. This provision was removed from the invoice.
It’s the same story on the East Coast. Last year, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul proposed legislation aimed at circumventing local opposition to housing. Fierce backlash came from largely white and relatively affluent “good liberals” in places like Westchester County, where Joe Biden received 67.6% of the vote in 2020. As in California, Democrats opposed to the plan used coded language : “local control”, “overcrowding”. ,” “traffic.”
New York State Rep. Phil Ramos cut through the euphemisms: “It doesn’t matter what kind of incentive you give them,” he told a rally. “A wealthy community, before they allow Black and Brown people in, they will forfeit any amount of money.” Hochul’s plan was rejected by a Democratic-dominated legislature.
Republicans, for their part, have not improved on these issues. A podcast from the right-wing Cicero Institute suggests that instead of calling people “homeless,” we revert to words like “vagrants,” “tramps” and “tramps.”
Such vilification is proven by the fact that poverty-stricken Mississippi has relatively few homeless people. Los Angeles County has six times more homeless people per capita like Metropolitan Jackson. For what? The average apartment in Mississippi’s capital rents for approximately $900compared to $2,750 in Los Angeles
The Biden administration recently released a report calling for more housing, but the federal government has limited power in this area. “Ultimately,” the report says, “meaningful change will require state and local governments to reassess the land use regulations that reduce housing supply.” This largely means undoing single-family zoning.
Senator Wiener’s push for apartment buildings in transit corridors was right. Would this make parts of Los Angeles look a little more like Manhattan? We can only hope so. If we stick to New York City, it would mean more vibrant neighborhoods and higher real estate values.
As the struggle for housing continues, tent cities have been normalized in California and beyond. Last year, one of my students seemed perplexed when I explained that this type of homeless person hadn’t always existed. However, I couldn’t be frustrated with her: this crisis has persisted – and worsened – for more than twice as long as she has been alive. It was not necessary.
Dale Maharidge is a professor of journalism at Columbia University and author of the upcoming book “American Doom Loop: Dispatches from a Nation in Trouble, 1980s-2020s”, from which this was adapted.
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