When it comes to the state’s intertwined problems of housing and homelessness, the glib assumption that the latter problem is primarily due to addiction and mental illness is still common. But years of research shows otherwise. For example, a comprehensive 2023 UC San Francisco study concluded the cost of shelter is the single largest factor in homelessness — with the insight that being forced onto the streets makes many folks’ relatively minor problems with mental illness and/or substance abuse far worse. Lead researcher Margot Kushel memorably called this a “personal doom loop” stemming from California’s “toxic combination of deep poverty and high housing costs.”
This report showed the urgent need for new tactics to increase shelter. Why not, say, put up inexpensive Quonset huts on government land, as was quickly done at Camp Pendleton early in World War II to house 1,000 military families? Why let NIMBYs and construction unions still have such sway over housing policy?
These view is amply ed by the evidence that a local housing initiative introduced with great fanfare has so far been a flop. Ridership is robust and growing on the 3-year-old Blue Line trolley extension connecting Old Town and UC San Diego, but this hasn’t yielded the high-rise housing along the line in Linda Vista, Clairemont and eastern Pacific Beach that city officials expected after special zoning rules were approved. In 2023, “only one apartment complex was approved near that trolley line extension, and it has just four units,” the U-T reported. Officials blamed factors including high interest rates and rising construction costs, and Planning Director Heidi Vonblum said the city remained “committed” to adding homes along the corridor. But Building Industry Association leader Lori Holt Pfeiler said there were also other obstacles, including “hesitation” from developers evaluating would-be incentives in new city and state laws.
Here’s a thought: Why doesn’t City Hall “commit” to a new approach: asking builders exactly how the government can best expedite new housing? It may or may not work. But how many more years of housing failure must San Diegans endure before it sinks in that central planners don’t know best?
