The high cost of housing in San Diego hurts tens of thousands of homeowners and renters, and adds to the growing ranks of the homeless. To date, efforts to solve this problem have fallen short. New ideas are needed.
The average price of a house in San Diego has gone up by 38 times since 1975, rising from $25,000 to $950,000. At that rate, 50 years from now a modest home will cost $36,000,000.
If printing money were the solution, the problem would already be solved.
It’s not just houses, everything has gone up. Many people just can’t make ends meet. Some homeowners are forced to sell, others are foreclosed on.
Renters who can’t pay rents that rise faster than their incomes have to move out. Some are evicted.
Displaced people scramble to find affordable alternatives by downsizing, couch-surfing or moving to Texas. It’s a tragic game of musical chairs. Some end up living in their cars or in the bone-dry bushes at the end of your street.
Since 2019, California has spent about $24 billion on homelessness. That much money could have bought a new, single-wide manufactured home for each and every unhoused person. Twice.
During that same time, the number of homeless people has risen by some 30,000 to around 180,000. It is unlikely the money was spent prudently.
About 135,000 more affordable household units are urgently needed in San Diego alone, but the same rising costs that drive people out of their homes make building new affordable housing, well, unaffordable. It would cost tens of billions. No one actually believes that these units will be built any time soon.
Meanwhile, partial solutions are being tried, some with unintended consequences. For example, various kinds of rent control discourage the creation of new rentals while vouchers and subsidies push rents up. Other measures, like rezoning, repurposing and retrofitting, while not perfect, will probably help, but not enough to meet the need.
So. What hasn’t been tried?
One new idea is suggested by the fact that there are about 770,000 homeless people in the United States and about 31.9 million unoccupied bedrooms. That’s right. For every unhoused individual in the United States today, there are more than 40 unoccupied bedrooms.
In San Diego alone, there are more than 10,000 homeless people, two-thirds of them unsheltered, which means they have no roofs over their heads. While the number of unoccupied bedrooms is unclear, more than a quarter of empty nesters live in houses with three or more bedrooms. In short, there are lots of unoccupied bedrooms in San Diego. Lots.
Bear with me.
Housing is somewhat fungible. This means that if only a small fraction of the homeowners with empty bedrooms chose to take in lodgers, the housing squeeze would be eased a bit for everyone, even if those taken in are not the unsheltered.
For example, let’s say a widow living on Social Security in a repurposed motel is welcomed into a home as a lodger. The motel room would then be available for, say, an Applebee’s server living in his car. Think of housing as a ladder with many rungs. More available rooms means more rungs on the ladder. Or, better, think of adding chairs to a grim game of musical chairs.
While most homeowners don’t want to rent their spare room to a low-income stranger, to the homeowner being squeezed out, renting out a room can mean holding on to the house.
Of course, there are financially strapped homeowners who already rent out rooms, but many hesitate, for a variety of reasons. Among them, under current law, a homeowner who takes in a lodger must (1) report the rent as income and pay tax on it, (2) assume liability for any harm to the lodger, and (3) follow the rules that make it difficult to move an unwanted lodger out.
Here is the new idea: Change the law. First, eliminate the tax on income from taking in long-term lodgers. Second, shield the homeowner from liability for harm to the lodger except in cases of actual malfeasance. Third, make the default lease for lodgers an at-will tenancy agreement that either party can terminate with short notice.
While lodgers would then enjoy fewer protections than other tenants, homeowners would be better protected from lodgers filing frivolous suits or dragging the eviction process through the courts. Such a limitation on liability is similar to what was done for drug companies to help address the COVID-19 crisis. Those who think this limitation is unacceptable are asked to consider the cost of inaction.
The longer people are unsheltered, the greater the probability they will experience unemployment, malnutrition, chronic disease, mental illness, substance abuse, injury due to violence and rape.
In this country, an unsheltered person dies at around 42 to 52 years old. To some extent, simply providing goods and services to people living rough has the unintended effect of subtly encouraging and enabling a lifestyle with an inexorably tragic trajectory.
The hard truth is that current rental protections for lodgers restrict the amount of affordable housing available and do nothing to protect the unsheltered. Any serious effort to solve the problem must prioritize helping people get off the street. It could be said that inaction is unacceptable.
Although admittedly only a partial solution, these small changes to the law would (1) make more affordable housing available, (2) put a downward pressure on rents, (3) reduce the number of foreclosures, (4) reduce the number of homeless people, and (5) improve the health, safety and longevity of those struggling with homelessness.
This is what is sometimes called a win-win.
All of this would be done with no new taxes. All the tenancy agreements would be negotiable and voluntary. No one would be forced to do anything. It’s all carrots, no sticks. Yes, some revenue would be lost by not taxing rental income from lodgers, but that which is taxed is discouraged, like smoking.
In fact, further steps could be taken to encourage homeowners to take in lodgers. Maybe a tax credit could be added, or there could be an organized effort to match up interested homeowners with prospective lodgers.
To wait for a sweeping solution to the affordable housing problem and not act on this partial solution would be to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
We could be waiting forever. Sure, the proposal has risks, but the benefits outweigh them, and providing shelter to a person in need is, first and foremost, a good deed. The changes proposed would simply encourage homeowners to perform a mitzvah.
If you have a better idea, I’m all ears.
Scott Chambers is a cartoonist, author and songwriter in Encinitas.
