Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur, D-West Hollywood, has unveiled a series of bills aimed at addressing California’s homeless crisis.
With over 170,000 homeless people, California has a disproportionate 30 percent of the nation’s homeless population. At least 10,000 people newly experienced homelessness between 2020 and 2022, and 64 percent of low-income households are rent-burdened and at serious risk of losing their homes.
Zbur’s Affordable Housing and Homelessness Resources Package includes four bills.
- AB 1431, the California Housing Security Act, aims to help the most housing insecure Californians remain in their homes during challenging economic times. The bill provides short and medium-term rent subsidies of up to $2,000 per month to older adults, adults with disabilities, people experiencing unemployment or homelessness, former foster youth, and recently incarcerated people. A two-year rent subsidy program funded at $500 million could prevent homelessness for over 10,000 people and save California billions on new supportive housing.
- AB 1620 allows tenants with permanent physical disabilities living in rent-controlled apartments to relocate to an available ground-level unit at the same rental rate and terms.
- AB 369 increases the age for foster youth to receive support through the Independent Living Program from 21 to 23 and clarifies that young adults are allowed to accumulate cash savings while in extended foster care.
- AB 1335 requires planning and reporting for sustainable housing development to be more transparent, better aligned with housing and sustainability goals, and incentivizes sustainable housing near transit to reduce reliance on cars.
Zbur believes that it is more cost-effective to keep people in their existing homes than to intervene after they become homeless. These bills provide cost-effective solutions to prevent homelessness, easing the burden on government programs and organizations across the state while giving local jurisdictions more life-saving tools to keep people in their homes and off the streets.
Wehoville censors posts because they do not want people to discuss one of the root causes for the lack of low cost housing. It goes against their political pandering for a certain party.
This is not true and I can direct you to the two op-eds, written in the past month, Affordable Housing part 1 and part 2.
“Sustainable” Really?
What is NOT sustainable is DEMOCRATS lust for tens of millions of illegal aliens (for HOUSE SEATS) consuming low cost housing from poor working class Americans!!
This was caused by no one but DEMOCRATS and the people who vote for them. Every city run by Democrats suffers from the same collective issues. Anyone with half a brain has only to ask oneself, why is that.
“Sustainable” Really?
What is NOT sustainable is DEMOCRATS lust for tens of millions of illegal aliens (for HOUSE SEATS) consuming low cost housing from poor working class Americans!!
This was caused by no one but DEMOCRATS ad the people who vote for them. Every city run by this suffers from the same collective issues. Anyone with half a brain has only to ask oneself, why is that.
Get a Republican senator to co-sponsor and then let’s talk about it.
West Hollywood is quickly catching up with San Francisco for the number of crazed vagrants on the streets. It’s much worse today in West Hollywood than it was in San Francisco just a few years ago.
I don’t support throwing more money at this group of people unless it reduces or eliminates their numbers on our streets.
Run by which political party…and the same one that runs PORTLAND, SEATTLE, Chicago, NYC, Det. Minn. New Orleans, D.C. , Phila. and every other crime ridden, cesspool of homelessness, drugs, and murder.
None of the homeless people Assemblyman Zbur is talking about are the ones in WeHo. Let’s talk about our homeless! The homeless crisis began when Gov. Pat Brown (father of Gov. Jerry Brown) decided as a last act before he left office it was a violation of the civil rights of the mentally ill to be required to live in facilities where they were taken care of, kept on medication, and off the streets. So all these people were put out and they promised to take their meds! Because it was the law, new Gov. Reagan had to enforce it,… Read more »
You are absolutely correct, Gimme!
I’ll just bet Assemblyman Zbur doesn’t know this! Policymakers rarely trace an existing problem back to where it began and maybe start there to fix it.
Well, isn’t this just the cherry on top of the sundae of political mediocrity? It’s almost as if our dear politicians were handed a script titled “How to pretend to care about the homeless without actually doing anything meaningful,” and they’ve been performing their roles perfectly ever since. But hey, with all the compassionate and likable characters like Robert Oliver on this dudes staff, we can at least be sure that we’ll get plenty of empty promises and hollow gestures. After all, who needs actual solutions when you can have drivel served up on a silver platter?
What a great idea. Just throw more money at people who don’t want to be helped. I have a solution that actually works: pass laws making it illegal to give anyone on a public street money or food. Both the giver and taker get 30 days in jail, and must share the same cell. Fine both of them $1,000. Make it illegal for any church or organization to give out free food or free money. Have free buses driving around to pick up the homeless, offering free food, tents, wifi, weekly showers, 3 or 4 hours out of town. Maybe… Read more »
All the proposals are worthwhile. But what we see on the streets of Los Angeles, and Weho, have little to do with housing as described.
Not all homeless are on drugs and that’s not the main issue coming from a homeless person themselves they don’t hear the side of the homeless people that just going up to what everybody who is not homeless are saying
Drug and other substance abuse affect more than 50% of the people on the streets.
But how would one get involved with one of the bills
All on the taxpayers backs at all levels. Are these remedies for legal USA Citizens or those going through the ardous steps to become a citizen legally?? They should be or be voted down