The California Association of Realtors (CAR) has a bone to pick with Gov. Gavin Newsome.
Newsome gave his State of the State address on Tuesday, and afterwards CAR was miffed that he did not specifically address homeownership or the housing industry in his remarks.
"The State of the State will not improve until California acts to dramatically increase the supply of ownership housing to provide working Californians the stability and prosperity that homeownership provides,” CAR President Otto Catrina said in a statement released after the address. "Working Californians today are excluded from the benefits of homeownership that middle-class Californians once took for granted."
Catrina noted that California's overall homeownership rate has declined to just 55%. He also said that, among the state's largest ethnic group — Latinos — it's just 44%, while only 37% of Black families own their home.
"This is unacceptable,” Catrina said.
In a brisk, 18-minute address, Newsom delved into many topics — some of which had nothing to do with California — before touching on the housing affordability crisis. However, the governor spoke only of the homeless population, rather than working-class people who are also struggling to afford homes.
Newsom touted that his administration has moved 58,000 people off the streets since the beginning of the pandemic, though a fact-checking website stated that the governor’s Project Homekey was able to move about only 8,000 people. The project is working to turn 12,000 dilapidated hotels and motels across the state into permanent housing with wraparound services.
Multiple state news sources, including the San Francisco Chronicle, criticized Gov. Newsom for his scattered address, stating that, “For a speech billed as California’s annual State of the State address, Gov. Gavin Newsom sure spent a lot of time talking about other places.” He spent much of the address talking about Ukraine (“We take strength from their contagious courage”), Florida (“Where you can’t say the word 'gay,'"), and Texas (“Where you can sue your history teacher for teaching history.”).
CAR was especially miffed that the governor didn’t even broach the subject of housing affordability in California.
"Homeownership, according to the California Housing Finance Agency, is the most effective way that people build wealth and stabilize communities,” Catrina continued in his statement. “However, the housing supply crisis has pushed the median home price sky high; on track to surpass $830,000 in 2022. This, in a state with a median household income of about $75,000. A stable and prosperous state cannot just have homes priced for software engineers and the already wealthy."
Catrina continued, "The lack of homeownership opportunity is the primary reason the middle class and the businesses that employ them move out of state, creating the growing and troubling income and wealth inequality we see around us today."
He said Realtors, "as part of a bipartisan coalition, have offered common-sense solutions to help address this crisis." Those solutions include:
- Prioritizing and acting to create homeownership opportunities for all of our diverse state.
- Shifting 30% of all federal housing funds coming to the state to homeownership funding — 20% to homeownership housing production and 10% to mortgage assistance.
- Setting aside $200 million for new construction within the CalHome program, and
- In California's 2022-23 state budget, allocating a minimum of 20% of total state housing funding to the production of owner-occupied, deed-restricted affordable housing for lower income Californians.
"A commitment to homeownership from our state's leaders is essential to creating equity, economic stability, and opportunity," Catrina said. "The 217,000 members of the California Association of Realtors stand ready to support policies to make real the promise of Homeownership for all Californians."
