The projected costs of housing the homeless in California
Posted: Sat Jan 22, 2022 9:47 am
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Why Does It Cost $750,000 to Build Affordable Housing in San Francisco?
As California’s governor vows to tackle the state’s homelessness crisis, housing “insanity” stands in the way.
Why Does It Cost $750,000 to Build Affordable Housing in San Francisco?
As California’s governor vows to tackle the state’s homelessness crisis, housing “insanity” stands in the way.
It would cost somewhere around $70 billion to build housing for its [California] current homeless population of 150,000.
A single affordable housing project requires financing from an average of six different sources — federal, state and local agencies, said Carolina Reid, a researcher at the Terner Center at the University of California, Berkeley, and an author of a forthcoming analysis of affordable housing costs.
She called the process “death by a thousand cuts.”
Senator Brian Jones, a member of California’s State Senate, remembers laboring over an affordable housing project when he was on the City Council of Santee, Calif., near San Diego.
“It literally took us on the City Council six months to get all of our attorneys, all the developer’s attorneys, all the federal government’s attorneys, to agree on the paperwork. And that was just the financing,” Mr. Jones said.
“I walked away from that process and told the developer I cannot believe this project is going to employ more attorneys than construction workers to get built.”