Bramson: Losing the path home

Last year, the U.S. government spent $67 billion on housing assistance for low-income residents. That’s approximately 1% of the total federal budget. This disproportionately small slice of the pie is nothing new. In fact, with the exception of a spike during COVID, the trend of drastic underinvestment actually continues a long-standing practice of little to no attention being paid to a crisis that is pushing more and more people outside every day.

It’s almost always been up to state and local governments to address the issues of housing and homelessness. And getting that job done typically meant going to the voters and seeking funding to make up the gaping hole where the feds have fallen short. But no money was on the ballot this time around and with everyone cash strapped and tightening their fiscal belts, it seems like we’re in for a bitter winter ahead.

It’s actually hard for me to make much sense of our direction after the outcome of the past week. Election results aside, collectively California made the decision to decrease the likelihood of future resources for housing, while blocking potential added protections for renters and increasing criminalization in a way that will actually make matters worse in the long run.

It’s a shocking turn of events for a state that has historically put people first. But, then again, when you have west coast cities now requiring drug testing to receive the meager scraps of general assistance or adopting citywide shelter bans, this is all probably par for the course.

It’s true that there are some small glimmers of hope. Los Angelenos, experiencing the impacts of living in the country’s epicenter of homelessness, passed a measure to create significant funding in perpetuity to support unhoused residents. And last March, San Franciscans — struggling to make ends meet in one of the highest cost-of-living markets in the world — supported a bond for new affordable housing development.

But the reality that it had to get to such harsh extremes to push people to act in those places sadly makes me feel like vast swaths of our state are going to need things to get even worse before we even begin to consider a path to somewhere better.

All that is to say that this isn’t a time for pep talks or blind optimism. We need to start planning now for what we want our community to be and how to help everyone thrive. The lean and trying times ahead won’t be easy, but if we can’t commit to each other and plan to help those who need it the most, we won’t find any silver linings on the dark clouds over the horizon.

San José Spotlight columnist Ray Bramson is the Chief Operating Officer at Destination: Home, a nonprofit that works to end homelessness in Silicon Valley. His columns appear every second Monday of the month. Contact Ray at [email protected] or follow @rbramson on X, formerly known as Twitter.