Claim: Increased gate money won’t solve CA’s housing cost crisis

While California senator Sydney Kamlager pushes for SB 1304 (to award ex-inmates with roughly $2,500, as opposed to the current $200, upon their release from prison), The Davis Vanguard’s David M. Greenwald points out that mere money-gifting can’t tackle the heart of prison-to-street pipelines. If local housing were affordable for everyday Californians, there wouldn’t be a need for taxpayers to contribute to additional “gate money” checks. To receive daily updates of new Opp Now stories, click here.

“When it comes to the room, gate money doesn’t go as far as it used to,” the Times notes.  “In 1973, the $200 the state provided might have been enough for a bus ticket from San Quentin to Los Angeles and a couple months in a decent apartment. With enough luck and outside help, that might have been sufficient time to find work that paid enough to keep the former prisoner housed.”

But the state has not increased this payment in almost half a century, “and the same $200 today means a bus ride, a sandwich and at most a night or two in a cheap motel. After that, many people wind up homeless. The state’s system amounts to a prison-to-street pipeline.”

The Times notes, “Researchers have found a strong link between leaving prison and living in tents or makeshift cardboard shelters. That’s especially true in places like Los Angeles where housing prices have skyrocketed over the course of a typical prison term.”

They note, “Unaffordable housing costs increase the chance that a person who leaves prison will return, because instead of a secure dwelling with a warm bed and a door that locks, the mean streets offer little but desperation and the danger of falling back into bad habits such as drug use and theft.”

Housing is a huge part of this problem and simply increasing the gate money will not fix the problem.

This article originally appeared in The Davis Vanguard. Read the whole thing here.

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