The No.1 reason people are leaving our great state of California– and the No.1 reason for homelessness here– is the high cost of housing.

It is unfathomable that in a state as wealthy as California, in a country as prosperous as the United States, we have such a major homelessness issue. We must do more to address this problem. I’m proud to have a 100% rating from California YIMBY (Yes In My Backyard), the leading pro-housing group in the state, and to be a leader in the efforts to build more housing in the state. 

At the federal level, we must expand efforts to fund affordable housing, including the creation of new housing, the rehabilitation of existing housing, and the easing of barriers that prevent lower income households from accessing housing. Earlier in my career, I led the Center for American Progress’s efforts to bolster our federal affordable housing funding, including developing the major proposal on reforming Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the housing finance entities that were put into federal conservatorship following the 2008 financial crisis. I hope to bring this expertise to bear in finding solutions for affordable housing in Congress.

Finally, it is critical that we recognize that to address the problem of the chronically homeless, we must do more than just provide housing. By the time you see someone on the streets, they’ve typically been homeless or housing-insecure for months or years, creating a vicious cycle of mental health and substance abuse problems that make it very difficult to re-enter society. The non-profit organizations that are dealing with homelessness most effectively have all reported the same thing– that the biggest barrier to their work is the difficulties in combining federal, state, and local funding for housing and mental health and substance abuse services. By easing these barriers, we can help solve the problem of homelessness.