The headline reads “How one of California’s cheapest cities became unaffordable: ‘the housing market is broken’”
There are so many quotes to excerpt:
Locals attribute the surge to people seeking to escape the high cost of living in Los Angeles and the Bay Area. But even as life returns to pre-pandemic norms, those who live here say the situation isn’t getting any better. Rents, which had been steadily climbing for years before the pandemic, are still rising and, coupled with a shortage of homes, that’s hitting low-income residents hardest.
“During Covid, Fresno and Central Valley rents just kept increasing,” said Jovana Morales-Tilgren, a housing policy coordinator with the Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability. “Many people were struggling and are still struggling. Landlords keep raising rents and people have nowhere to go.” — emphasis added
[…]
“The labor market in Fresno is not catching up to the price of housing.”
Translation: rents/housing costs are rising faster than wages: newcomers can pay more than the local residents. The value of land compared to the value of people’s lives means people who can’t pay what the landlords want have to find something else.
“Fresno is becoming a very popular place,” said Karla Martinez, a policy advocate with the Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability who works with Fresno residents. “People see how cheap the housing market is here.” California’s high-speed rail project, which will connect Los Angeles to San Francisco via the Central Valley, is also a selling point, Martinez said.
Translation: the state is investing in a high speed rail link that makes the land in Fresno more valuable. Landlords are cashing in on investments they didn’t make. The workers for whom that rail link was built will be gone.
Francisca Alba lives in a tidy two-bedroom apartment with her husband and four children. They can afford the monthly rent of $710, but the unit has been deteriorating for years and the property manager has done little to help. The carpet hasn’t been replaced, or even cleaned, in the 15 years she’s lived there, nor has the unit received a fresh coat of paint.
6 people in two bedrooms…think about that. Because as the value of land rises and wages stay static, landlords cut costs and what were once acceptable properties become derelict. Not to defend landlords/slumlords but they keep the value of the land, even if the “improvements” crumble into the ground: that’s the landlord’s game. They can sell or redevelop and keep on keeping on.
Fresno county is short more than 36,000 affordable housing units, according to the California Housing Partnership, a trend echoed throughout the state. It’s a crisis driven by a demand that far exceeds the supply and a lack of subsidies to build affordable housing.
36,000 units. The land supply is fixed. California is no bigger or smaller than it was 100 years ago. So what needs to happen? How does Fresno pay for 36,000 housing units? Why are rents in Fresno rising? Why isn’t housing being built to meet demand? Because land is too expensive to buy for new affordable housing and the existing housing is scarce enough to allow landlords to hike their rents.
Tax the land, confiscate the unearned wealth and — more important — keep wages and costs from spiraling out of control. Right now we see wages for fast food employees that are more than triple the federal minimum wage. The market for labor — for wages that will cover rising rents — is pushing wages up which will push rents up: rents chase the ability to pay, which is why cities with an influx of high wage workers, either in the old fields of North Dakota or the cube farms of Seattle and San Francisco, will see rents rise to meet those wages.