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THE UNHOUSED -
This article was produced by the nonprofit journalism publication Capital & Main. It is co-published here with permission.
California’s affordable housing crisis exists on many levels. It crosses the political spectrum and, too often, involves the kinds of staggering cost estimates that can make it feel impossible to solve.
But a new law represents one small step down that road — and at the very ground level.
Signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in September, the law extends for more than a decade a process through which local governments can streamline and speed the construction and placement of so-called tiny homes within their communities. This interim housing — prefabricated, portable and very basic — has already been successfully used in San Jose and other cities to move more homeless people off the street and into shelter.
“Interim housing is the missing rung on the ladder to permanent housing,” the bill’s author, state Sen. Josh Becker (D-Menlo Park), said earlier this year. “The [bill] takes a proven local housing strategy and makes it available statewide, giving local governments a new tool to address the homelessness and housing crises.”
Dignity Moves, a Northern California nonprofit that has partnered with several communities on such projects, uses private money to construct these living modules, relying on the same building codes that FEMA employs to respond to natural disasters. That allows for above-ground utilities, smaller room sizes and no underground permanent foundations, among other things.
The units can be forklifted to one area and later moved to another, depending upon where available land sits. Using this approach, the city of San Jose has built hundreds of units of temporary but individual housing, with plans to do more. Matt Mahan, the city’s mayor, said last year that San Jose’s unsheltered population had dropped by 10% since 2022.
“It certainly does a lot of things that make it a cost-benefit payoff in spades,” said Elizabeth Funk, founder and CEO of Dignity Moves, who estimated the cost of each tiny home at $50,000, compared with state estimates of more than $800,000 to build units of affordable housing. “The cost of leaving someone on the street is twice what it is to get them indoors in treatment and perhaps returning to self-sufficiency. That seems very logical, and yet it has been contrary to policy.”
The law is one of several 2024 pieces of legislation that may directly affect the state of inequality in California. Among others:
Eviction Protection. Under previous statute, tenants who received an eviction notice from their landlord had five business days to respond — and if they didn’t respond in that time, they automatically lost their case. The new law, authored by Assemblymember Ash Kalra (D-San Jose), doubles that period to 10 business days. The extra time, housing advocates say, will give tenants the opportunity to figure out their options and get help, including legal aid. That could be critical for those who don’t speak English as a first language and may not initially understand the seriousness of the notice they’ve been given.
Family Leave and Time Off. Two bills signed by Newsom will provide workers with a greater ability to access leave. In the past, employers could make workers burn two weeks of paid vacation time before accessing the state’s Paid Family Leave program, which provides up to eight weeks of partial pay to take time off for things like family emergencies and bonding with a new child. Employers are no longer allowed to enforce such a requirement. Another law, meanwhile, requires employers to provide time off to victims of “qualifying acts of violence,” including domestic abuse and sexual assault, regardless of whether anyone is charged or convicted in connection with the case.
Medical Debt and Credit Reports. A handful of states do not allow credit reporting agencies to include a person’s medical debt as part of their evaluation. California will join them in 2025. The new law specifically prohibits the agencies from including debt that people owe directly to a medical provider, such as a hospital or doctor. (It doesn’t cover medical debt that was charged to a credit card.) According to the California Health Care Foundation, one in three Californians reported carrying medical debt in 2023. Almost 50% of Latino residents of the state had such debt.
No Mandatory Anti-Union Meetings. Amid a recent surge in union activity up and down the state, a new law bans mandatory workplace meetings — commonly known as “captive audience” meetings — at which employers opine on “religious or political matters.” It’s aimed directly at the longstanding practice by some employers of making workers gather for the purpose of telling them why unionizing would be a mistake. Also, workers cannot be retaliated against for refusing to attend such meetings.
Minimum Wage. It’s not a new law, but under the existing formula that accounts for inflation adjustment, the statewide minimum hourly wage will rise to $16.50 in the new year. (A measure to raise the minimum to $18 by 2026 failed narrowly in November.) Fast-food workers in most settings have already seen their minimum wage rise to $20, while workers in several health care settings have begun receiving raises that are designed to reach $25 per hour over a number of years. Across California as a whole, it’s estimated that a single adult with no children would need to earn more than $27 an hourjust to meet basic needs.
(Mark Kreidler is a California-based writer and broadcaster, and the author of three books, including Four Days to Glory.)
Copyright 2024 Capital & Main
