LA perspective: Oppressive zoning restrictions keep unhoused people unhoused

If local pols continue labeling homelessness as fundamentally a housing problem, it's time they address our restrictive zoning laws, says USC prof/housing expert Benjamin Henwood. These policies constrain housing supply, failing to meet market demand while ridiculously driving up homebuying costs—and this further complicates solutions for folks in the homelessness cycle. Originally from LAist.

L.A. city and county are continuing to see a sharp rise in homelessness — with newly released point-in-time count numbers showing the number of unsheltered people rising 14% from the prior year.

That continues a longer-term trend of more and more people living on L.A.’s streets. Unsheltered homelessness — which refers to people living outdoors in vehicles, tents and makeshift shelters like propped-up tarps — is up 40% over the past five years, rising to 55,155 people countywide....

Benjamin Henwood, a USC professor who helped with the count, said the results show homelessness is being driven by huge challenges — mainly the housing crisis — that will require large-scale changes to fix.

“Looking at the homeless service system to solve homelessness is probably not the right way to think about it when it really is driven by issues in our housing markets and shortage of affordable housing,” he told LAist.

Image by LAist

“The pace of housing construction has really lagged … so that’s what really pushed the shortage of housing,” he said. And then as income inequality becomes worse, the housing that exists becomes unaffordable.

“Laws and zoning issues have to be changed to try to make up for that lost [housing] capacity as quickly as possible,” Henwood said.

This article originally appeared in LAist. Read the whole thing here.

For more on zoning laws in SJ, read perspectives from transit expert Randal O’Toole and SV Taxpayers Association president Mark Hinkle here.

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