Low wages, high rents and lack of affordable housing are the primary cause of the homeless/housing crisis, according to the seminal California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness (CASPEH) from the University of California, San Francisco. More than half of our homeless population attribute the high cost of housing as the main cause of their homelessness, the UCSF study said.
Lose your job, lose your home.
Most homeless people don’t look or act homeless. They try hard not to be labeled and stigmatized as homeless, but they are living lives of quiet desperation.
The numbers vary widely, but reliable sources ranging from the UCSF study to the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to internationally respected website InvisiblePeople.tv agree that far fewer than half of all homeless people are substance abusers or suffer from mental illness.
Besides the inability to find or afford housing, people become homeless for reasons such as release from institutions with no resources, accident or illness, domestic violence, trauma, abandonment, runaways, abuse, discrimination, natural or human-caused disaster, criminal mistakes, poor choices and bad luck.
Nobody gets out of homelessness without help. It’s extremely difficult to heal, regroup, stay clean, start over, find a job, raise children, go to work or school when you have no safe place to, as one homeless man put it, “shit, shower and shave.”
Housing First, Housing Now for its citizens must be Nevada County’s highest priority.
HOW AND WHY
Nevada County’s proposed tiny homes on wheels (THOW) ordinance is a well-intentioned step toward mitigating the lack of housing, but it does not go far enough. It does not meet the immediate housing needs of the low-income workforce, much less people on fixed incomes who are aged and/or disabled.
The proposed THOW ordinance must be amended to include all “homes on wheels” (HOW) – trailers, RVs and mobile homes. They are functionally the same as THOW units and are subject to the same DMV licensing requirements.
In the face of this homeless/housing crisis, all HOW units that meet code-equivalent, minimum health and standards must be legalized. We have a homeless/housing emergency. HOW housing presents the opportunity to offer real affordable housing to our citizens who are most at risk of homelessness.
Declassification
The elephant in the room when discussing the inclusion of trailers, RVs and mobile homes in the THOW ordinance is the elitist myth that “trailers” and the people who live in them are undesirable.
It is grossly unfair and unacceptable to deprive people of housing because of prejudicial NIMBY beliefs. This is a civil rights issue. Everybody has a right to housing.
Homes on wheels may not be the ideal solution, but to meet immediate, low-income housing needs, they are the best solution.
Code Compliance
Thousands of Nevada County residents are already living in HOW alternative housing units (AltDUs). They live in secrecy, fearing any complaint could cause the disruption and forced relocation of their lives, families and/or jobs.
Code Compliance’s enforcement of arbitrary rules and regulations based on meritless and malicious complaints does not serve the public good.
Forcing people to move does not solve the problem. It creates a bigger, more expensive problem for the tenants, the landlords and the county.
Instead of moving people, Code Compliance’s top priority should be to make people safe where they are. The Code Compliance director should exercise his “sole discretion” not to act on malicious and mean-spirited complaints.
Property owners’ rights end at their property line. They must not have the right to infringe on a neighbor’s right to offer HOW housing.
Nevada County leadership
Nevada County is essentially copying the Placer County THOW ordinance. Nevada County can do better. As a leader among rural counties, Nevada County should model the innovative and cost-effective adoption of a HOW ordinance that would truly be a meaningful mitigation of our rural homeless/housing crisis.