Study: Expensive housing root cause of California's homelessness

California, the richest state in the US by GDP, has been vexed by homelessness for years despite billions of dollars of investment. A new study has found the "fundamental" problems behind the crisis: lost income and lack of affordable housing.

The  findings show that at least 90 percent of adults who are experiencing homelessness in the state became homeless while living in California due primarily to the dire lack of affordable housing.

The study suggests efforts should be focused on increasing housing for extremely low-income residents, because it is "the only way out of homelessness".

"This idea that homeless people are rushing into California is just not true," said Margot Kushel, a physician who treats homeless people and was the lead investigator of the study for the UC-San Francisco Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative. "There's so much mythmaking around this magnet theory that people who are homeless flock to California, but this is our own problem."

To better understand the homeless population, researchers conducted what they call the largest representative study of homelessness in the United States since the mid-1990s.

The California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness surveyed nearly 3,200 participants 18 and older and included 365 in-depth interviews with adults experiencing homelessness in eight distinct regions around the state, representing a diversity of experiences between October 2021 to November 2022.

"The results of the study confirm that far too many Californians experience homelessness because they cannot afford housing," said Kushel, in a press release.

She said there are conflicting ideas about how to address homelessness, and the study is aimed at providing a comprehensive look at the causes so that policymakers can design effective programs.

Contrary to what people usually see on the streets, most of the homeless residents end up unsheltered simply because the cost of housing had become unsustainable, other than mental health, addiction and other factors, according to the study released on Tuesday.

The survey participants reported a median monthly household income of $960 in the six months prior to their homelessness. The median rent for one-bedroom apartments in California is now $1,897, and rent in California is 50 percent higher than the national median, according to data by real estate company Zillow.

The most common reason for leaving their last housing was economic for leaseholders and social for non-leaseholders, and participants believed financial support could have prevented homelessness.

The study shows that 70 percent believed a monthly rental subsidy of $300-$500 would have prevented their homelessness for a sustained period; and 82 percent believed a one-time financial help of $5,000-$10,000 would have prevented their homelessness.

The survey found that two-thirds of participants reported experiencing mental health symptoms — including depression, anxiety or hallucinations — in the past 30 days. About one-third reported using drugs three or more times a week, and 1 in 5 people reported regular drug or heavy alcohol use. But few had access to treatment, according to the study.

It also found that half of them over the age of 50 are disproportionately likely to be black and Native American.

California has spent billions of dollars on homelessness in recent years, but the number of unhoused people increased by nearly a third to 171,000 as of last year, the largest homeless population of any state in the US and 30 percent of the nation's total, even though California has just 12 percent of the population, according to federal data.

California has nine times more unsheltered people than Washington, the state with the next highest number.