The more than 100 housing bills passed by lawmakers and signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom since 2019 have done little to nothing to solve any of the three problems they were intended to address: availability, affordability and homelessness.
That was the conclusion of the Supreme Court judge who last spring declared one of the most important new laws, the SB 9 of 2021, unconstitutional. This law gave homeowners in neighborhoods with single-family homes (R1) permission to subdivide their lots and build six housing units, where previously there was only one.
Since the law went into effect, fewer than 2,000 such subdivisions have occurred. And even if they had become common, they would have done little to address the problems they were supposed to solve.
That’s because there’s nothing in the law that forces a homeowner or developer who wants to subdivide a property to make the homes affordable — another word for making them financially accessible to low-income people (households of four making less than $114,000 a year, by one city’s standard) or to people who spend more than 30 percent of their monthly income on rent or mortgages, by another definition.
Most homeless people are homeless because they fall into these categories, so SB 9 never thought there was anything that could help them.
A study now shows that more than half of the homeless will soon be 50 or older. The number of homeless people over 65 will triple between 2017 and 2030 unless action is taken quickly.
For the state and its cities and counties, this is one of the most disastrous financial situations they could ever face.
Current law prohibits emergency rooms from turning away anyone in need of emergency care, even if they have no insurance. The state and its local components end up footing the bill, costing billions of dollars. A single emergency room visit by an uninsured adult averages just under $300, with homeless adults typically visiting the emergency room multiple times a year, and the number increases as they age.
That's why the findings from the latest homelessness study from the UC San Francisco Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative are critical for California, where budget constraints have already reduced average annual spending on homelessness.
With the homeless population steadily aging, partly due to rising rents and a lack of affordable housing of all sizes, and with the median home price in the state's largest county now exceeding $980,000 — or more than $100,000 higher than a year ago — this problem can only get worse.
Margot Kushel, MD, director of the Benioff Program, said, “The dramatic increase in homelessness among older adults has serious implications for the health and safety of those experiencing it and (for) our society as a whole.”
She urged swift action to prevent even more homelessness among seniors. This would not only be humane, she said, but also financially prudent. The Benioff report, for example, said that “adults experiencing homelessness in their 50s and 60s have similar health status to people 20 years older in the general population.”
In short, the rapidly increasing homelessness of older people will soon translate into much higher public spending on their medical care. That spending will likely persist longer than for younger homeless people, because older homeless people typically experience “prolonged periods of homelessness,” the median duration of their homelessness now being 25 months, or just over two years.
The report, based in part on 365 interviews with homeless people, found that older adults believe that “modest” financial assistance, including housing vouchers and small subsidies such as one-time payments that help them secure an apartment by financing the deposit, can help them secure permanent housing.
That's why the Benioff Program recommends paying special attention to prevention efforts that target at-risk seniors, expanding seniors' access to health care before they become homeless — even if they are uninsured — and expanding services for homeless seniors well beyond current levels.
All of these things cost money, but if you let the homeless elderly population grow, that will increase the legally mandated spending on medical care even more. It’s a situation dramatically captured in a slogan from a 1990s TV commercial for car oil filters: “You can pay me now (for prevention), or you can pay me later (for a lot more).”
Email Thomas Elias at [emailprotected]. His book, “The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government's Campaign to Squelch It,” is now available in a softcover fourth edition. For more of Elias' columns, visit www.californiafocus.net
