Affordable housing

The city may be about to follow the lead of several other communities around California and the nation by establishing a “risk mitigation fund” as an incentive to landlords who are reluctant to rent their units to the homeless.

Mayor Michael Tubbs’ office has proposed Stockton establish the $50,000 fund, which would reimburse landlords if they rent to homeless residents, and those residents subsequently damage property, are late on rent or force a long and costly eviction process.

Anyone who’s ever searched for a rental on Craigslist has seen the parenthetical message next to a listing: No Section 8.

It’s a barrier to many who can’t afford Sebastopol’s median rent of approximately $2,000.

The Section 8 housing voucher choice program assists low-income individuals and families with their rental payments. In Sonoma County, the program is administered by the county’s Community Development Commission (CDC), spearheaded by executive director Margaret Van Vliet.

The following is a Truthout interview with Peter Moskowitz, author of How to Kill a City: Gentrification, Inequality, and the Fight for the Neighborhood.

Mark Karlin: How do you define gentrification?strong

It’s no secret that the Bay Area has become increasingly unaffordable for many workers because of the soaring cost of housing. But a recent study gives a glimpse into just how much the region’s sky-high rents are gobbling up the paychecks of one core segment of its work force: teachers.

Housing activists in Pasadena are asking the leaders of Fuller Seminary to re-read the Bible, especially this passage from Jeremiah: “Woe to him who builds his house without righteousness and his upper rooms without justice.”

The theological school is pushing a plan before the city’s Planning Commission this Wednesday that would destroy almost 200 units of affordable housing and replace them with 307 units of luxury housing. The prophet Jeremiah would be outraged. And so should all people of conscience in Pasadena, regardless of their religion.

Ana Navarro lives with her husband and two young children in a 450-square-foot apartment. The kids — ages 10 and 3 — share a bedroom that’s more like a glorified closet.

San Diego is the second worst market for renters in the country. That’s the word from Forbes’ 2017 ranking of 46 metropolitan areas, where only Miami is worse.

Analysts factored in San Diego’s monthly apartment rent ($1,748), vacancy rate (3.1 percent), annual rent increase (4.8 percent) and the portion of income spent on rent (30 percent).

In fact, six regions in California — San Diego, Los Angeles, Orange County, Riverside-San Bernardino, Oakland and Sacramento — ranked among the 10 worst.

Cuts to affordable housing funding in President Donald Trump's proposed budget would be devastating to California, Democratic state lawmakers said Friday, stressing that the White House's plans increase pressure on them to address the state's housing crisis.

Trump's budget blueprint calls for more than $6 billion in cuts to the federal Housing and Urban Development Department, including eliminating Community Development Block Grants and reducing money for public housing.

When visitors want to experience this city’s much celebrated “alternative” culture, they often make their way to Heinrichplatz, a graffiti-covered square in the Kreuzberg neighborhood that for decades has been a hub for independent arts, underground night life and radical politics.

But on a recent Saturday afternoon, the usual clusters of selfie-snapping tourists and cafegoers were met by hundreds of demonstrators carrying signs that read, “We’re all staying” or “Say no to crowding out,” and protesting rising rents, forced evictions and rampant real estate speculation.

Even as officials say affordable housing is a top priority, San Diego County shed more subsidized rental housing over the past two decades than all but two other California counties.

That's according to a report released last week by the California Housing Partnership Corporation, which found the county lost 3,588 federal- and state-subsidized housing units between 1995 and 2016 — an average of more than three affordable rentals per week. That left 32,807 affordable housing units countywide, according to the San Francisco-based housing nonprofit.