Page 64 - AAGLA-JULY 2022

Feature Story
Only one in four eligible, low-income individuals receives any sort of assistance according to The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, November 15, 2017. The Section 8 waiting list is years!
The Need to Look at Multiple Approaches
We need to look at multiple possible solutions to the issue of affordable housing. The government is clearly inept at building housing, affordable or otherwise. Over the last 40 years we have allowed Wall Street to wage war on private housing investment for their own benefit. Many of the tax advantages at the federal level have been wiped out. At the state level, here in California CEQA and other regulations bring unintended consequences and have made housing more expensive and difficult to develop. Locally, zoning restrictions and difficulties getting entitlements coupled with rent control make private investment in housing far less attractive.
Wall Street began buying houses through distress sales to flip for profit. Now they have been buying houses to rent. In the process they are driving up the price of the houses and apartments and pricing prospective, private buyers out of the market. One company owns over 100,000 properties that it rents, with no intention of selling. They even advertise on television they will pay cash for houses in any condition. Wall Street has taken the view they don’t care which party is in the White House, and they’ll still count the money. Going back to the Reagan era, all the treasury secretaries came from Wall Street. We must break this stranglehold!
There are six phases of most government projects. They are: (1) Enthusiasm – In the beginning everyone thinks this is a great idea. (2) Disillusionment - Once it becomes clear, it was a bad idea and people question why it was done. (3) Panic - Once the true costs come in, then chaos sets in. (4) Search for the Guilty – There is always a belief that someone must be guilty of something. (5) Punishment of the Innocent - Usually the people who are punished had nothing to do with the project in the first place. And, (6) Praise and Honors for the Non-Participants - Finally, the people who had nothing to do with the project or its solution receive all the glory for the solution.
In order to resolve the issues of homelessness and housing crisis, we have to break this cycle.
The author, Roderick Wright, is a former member of the California State Senate and Assembly. He has developed affordable housing with the Inner-City Housing Corporation. He worked in the Planning Department of the City of Los Angeles. He also worked at the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG). Mr. Wright has been a rental property owner for over 40 years and is also a member of the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles and the Coalition of Small Rental Property Owners.
64 JULY 2022 • WWW.AAGLA.ORG
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