California is number one, in poverty, again

On Tuesday, the Census Bureau released the latest figures on poverty in America. Once again, the Golden State leads the rest of the country in poverty in the bureau’s supplemental poverty measure. According to the report, based on a three year average fro

There are a few things to note about this report.

The first is that it remains to be seen what the long-term economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic and the policy responses to it — and how that will impact poverty rates.

We know that unemployment has been in the doubledigits throughout the pandemic, while millions have had to deal with state unemployment assistance that has been at best inconsistent, at worst unprepared and incompetent.

Second, California, while an economic powerhouse, has regrettably long topped the list among the states in the supplemental poverty measure.

This is in large part due to California’s extraordinarily high cost of housing. Plain and simple, it costs a lot of money to live in California.

As we’ve written many times, the root of the problem is not all that complicated. It’s simple supply and demand. California’s housing stock has not kept up with population growth. California needs more housing to be built.

Unfortunately, while there have been more efforts in recent years to figure out precisely how to facilitate that, policymakers even before the pandemic had a preference for policies like rent control which only make the fundamental problem worse over time.

That’s a long-term problem that will continue to contribute to California’s status as simultaneously one of the most powerful economies on Earth and the state with the highest poverty rate.

Third, while the number of Californians in poverty is quite high, we also know that there are many others that are on the brink of poverty.

In July, the Public Policy Institute of California, citing the separate California Policy Measure, estimated that 17.6 percent of Californians in 2018 lived in poverty. But in addition, they estimated that an additional 17.6 percent of Californians “were not in poverty but lived fairly close to it.”

With poverty a proxy for a litany of wide-ranging negative outcomes, it is troubling that so many Californians are living in or near poverty.

It is even more troubling that for years California has topped the list of poverty among the states, yet California policymakers continue to pursue policies that won’t help and often will do more harm than good.

It is critical that California make a point of continuing to make it easier, not harder, to build housing.

California voters can do their part by voting down Proposition 21, which would expand rent control in the state, and voting down Prop. 15, which would dramatically raise property taxes on certain commercial and industrial properties.

California lawmakers can do their part by, for starters, finally taking up reform of the California Environmental Quality Act so that it is no longer abused by NIMBYs to hold up needed housing development.

Even then, these are just starting points. It will take considerable work to effectively tackle California’s poverty problem.