UCSF study: homeless people in California are from California
Homelessness is high where housing is scarce and expensive
The Myth of Homeless Migration. Jerusalem Demsas, The Atlantic, July 2023.
Pundits and politicians routinely claim that the California homelessness crisis is actually a result of people moving from other states for better weather or better public benefits. But new research casts doubt on this theory. Last month, researchers at UC San Francisco released the largest representative survey of homeless people in more than 25 years. It comprises survey data from 3,200 homeless people in California and in-depth interviews with more than 300 of them.
The overwhelming majority of homeless people surveyed were locals, not migrants from far away: 90 percent lost their last housing in California, and 75 percent lost it in the same county where they were experiencing homelessness. Of the 10 percent who came from elsewhere, 30 percent were born in California. Most of the others had familial or employment ties, or had previously lived in the state.
Taking a step back, the idea that tens of thousands of people move to California after becoming homeless makes little sense. Moving is expensive. People who lose their housing rarely have the means to transport themselves, their families, their pets, and their belongings across the country. Setting that aside, homelessness makes people vulnerable. The first instinct is not to move to new terrain, but to remain near family and friend networks as well as potential job opportunities.
The reason that there’s so many homeless people in California is that housing is so scarce and expensive there:
What does the median price of a house mean to someone who is about to be evicted from an overcrowded apartment he shares with extended family? A lot, actually. A housing chain connects low-income housing, middle-income housing, and high-income housing. When new market-rate units are first made available and people move into them, that frees up space in the homes they previously lived in, which are usually older. When new housing isn’t brought to market, high-income residents turn to older units, bidding up the price. In turn, middle-income workers turn to lower-income housing units, and everyone at the bottom crowds together in a dwindling stock of affordable housing until someone loses their spot.
Every day that California and other expensive states across the country delay in building more housing is another future family turned out onto the street.
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Aaron Carr on causes of homelessness. “A failure or unwillingness to carefully look at the data has led countless people to believe that the primary drivers of homelessness are drugs, mental health, poverty, the weather, progressive policies, or virtually anything and everything that isn’t housing. And while some, but not all, of the aforementioned factors are indeed factors in homelessness, none of them, not a single one of them, are primary factors. Because if you want to understand homelessness, you have to follow the rent. And if you follow the rent, you will come to realize that homelessness is primarily a housing problem.” Twitter thread.
The Economist on homelessness increasing in the most prosperous American cities, October 2019. “An analysis by Chris Glynn and Emily Fox, two statisticians, predicts that a 10% increase in rents in a high-cost city like New York would result in an 8% increase in the number of homeless residents. Wherever homelessness appears out of control in America—whether in Honolulu, Seattle or Washington, DC—high housing costs almost surely lurk. Fixing this means dealing with a lack of supply, created by over-burdensome zoning regulations and an unwillingness among Democratic leaders to overcome entrenched local interests.”
Matthew Yglesias: “If you bring three cookies to a group of four kids and tell them they should fight to see who gets the cookie, the smallest one probably won’t get a cookie. To conclude that small size is the ‘root cause’ of cookielessness would be obtuse. The problem is that you didn’t bring enough cookies. Homelessness is about housing!”