Senate candidates turn focus to homelessness and housing
Issue looms large for voters as top contenders stake out varying positions.
No issues excite, interest or anger California voters more than the housing crisis and homelessness.
Because seeing tents on street corners is how most Californians process the crisis, it’s often viewed the domain of local politicians. The reality is that much of the funding to address homelessness or housing insecurity flows from the federal government. About 28% of the country’s homeless population or about 180,000 people live in California.
Because of Washington’s influence, electing a senator with an expertise on the issue and proposals to alleviate the crises will be pivotal to California’s future.
While homelessness and housing have not been the dominate issues in the race to succeed the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the candidates have made some of their views known. Democratic Reps. Katie Porter of Irvine, Adam Schiff of Burbank and Barbara Lee of Oakland, along with Republican Steve Garvey, have all offered insights that give some clues to what shapes their world view on those issues.
Steve Garvey
The former professional baseball player campaigned this winter by appearing at a homeless shelter in San Diego and taking a tour of Skid Row in Los Angeles. The point of the trip, he told reporters, was to get up to speed on the issue.
“Once we get through the primary, I’ll start a deeper dive into the [issues],” Garvey,
who played for the Dodgers and San Diego Padres, said outside the San Diego shelter.
“I haven’t been at this very long, so you got to give me a little bit of leeway here.”
Since then, he’s offered few specifics as to how he’d tackle these twin crises if elected to the Senate. During a televised debate in February, Garvey railed about regulations stifling the ability to build more housing in the state, but he couldn’t name a regulation he’d like to cut. He blames Democrats for failing to address the issues after spending billions of dollars. He’s called for an audit on how money has been spent by government but has said little on how he’d do things differently.
When talking about homelessness, Garvey focuses on the drug and mental health crisis that is playing out on the state’s streets. “We need to dig deep and provide comprehensive care that includes mental health, addiction treatment, and affordable housing,” his campaign site states.
Homeless people “need to be taken off the streets. They need to be cared for. It’s the drugs and the mental illness that’s the truest disaster,” he said.
Adam Schiff
The Burbank representative has backed legislation that has expanded federal funding for housing. He, along with Lee and Porter, voted for the American Rescue Plan along with the earlier COVID-19 stimulus package that included billions of dollars in rental subsidies for people on the verge of eviction. He also supported the Ending Homelessness Act of 2023, legislation sponsored by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), a roughly $10-billion proposal to reducing homelessness though existing government programs.
In the past, Schiff has used a federal grant funding mechanism known as earmarks — or money targeted at specific projects — to get money for nonprofits in his district. In the 2022, his office got about $11 million in funding for projects that touched homelessness, housing and food insecurity.
On the campaign trail, Schiff has talked quite a bit about homelessness and economic insecurity. Both Schiff and Porter have released housing plans, and each has talked about the need to expand the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, which is the signature program for financing affordable housing construction in the United States. The program offers tax breaks for investors who fund such construction.
Separately, just a quarter of the people who qualify receive the federal government’s main rental subsidy program, known as Section 8 housing vouchers. Schiff and others have called for this program to be an entitlement — meaning everyone who meets the income requirements receives the subsidy.
Schiff wants to increase federal spending on homelessness by at least $100 billion. Currently the federal govenremnt spends about $10 billion on homelessness assistance programs through the Department of Housing and Urban Development. (This doesn’t include rental subsides through the Section 8 program). He also wants to restrict private equity investors from buying up large tracts of housing so as not to crowd out first-time purchasers of homes and provide down payment assistance to low-income Americans when buying homes.
Katie Porter
Porter talks about homelessness and housing in starkly personal terms, describing how her own children worry whether they’ll be able to afford to live in California because of the cost of housing. She’s also said the current situation is a failure of decades of bad policy out of Washington.
“Housing was barely an issue in the last Democratic presidential election, and it hasn’t been enough of an issue yet in this race in my opinion,” she told The Times after a debate.
Porter’s housing plan also calls for fully funding the Section 8 voucher program. The federal budget includes about $30 billion for these rental vouchers, which help around 2 million Americans pay rent. To fully fund it, experts estimate that the federal government would need to spend about $100 billion a year on the program .
If elected, Porter said, she would “push for improved tax credits and government loan guarantees, which will spur Wall Street to provide financing for increasing home ownership opportunities for our workforce.”
Porter also expressed skepticism over Wall Street’s incursion into the housing market, saying her plan would discourage investment firms from viewing real estate speculation as a financial tool to grow their own profits.
Barbara Lee
Lee has talked openly about being homeless herself. It occurred in her mid-20s when she was single mother of two and had just left an abusive relationship. The experience shaped how she views the issue, she said.
Much of Lee’s career in politics has focused on addressing poverty. In Congress, she and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders were advocates for the funding of the National Affordable Housing Trust Fund — a program meant to restore and build low income rental housing. If elected, she says, she would “invest more than $1 trillion in the National Affordable Housing Trust Fund to build millions of affordable units in both urban and rural areas, offer assistance for first-time home buyers, and provide rent relief for lowerincome renters.”
Like Porter and Schiff, Lee wants to make the Section 8 program an entitlement so it’s available to everyone who qualifies.
She’s pushed for a cap on yearly rental increases and legislation that would help renters afford “security deposits and other essential moving costs.”
Like the other Democrats, Lee supports Rep. Waters’ Ending Homelessness Act of 2023.
“We have to make sure children have safe housing and we have to make sure the federal government invests in our unsheltered population,” Lee said.