An abandoned office park in Sacramento will be the site of the first group of 1,200 tiny homes to be built in four cities to address California’s homelessness crisis, the governor’s office announced Wednesday after being criticized for the project experiencing multiple delays.
Gov. Gavin Newsom is under pressure to make good on his promise to show he’s tackling the issue. In March, the Democratic governor announced a plan to gift several California cities hundreds of tiny homes by the fall to create space to help clear homeless encampments that have sprung up across the state’s major cities. The $30 million project would create homes, some as small as 120 square feet (11 square meters), that can be assembled in 90 minutes and cost a fraction of what it takes to build permanent housing.
More than 171,000 homeless people live in California, making up about 30% of the nation’s homeless population. The state has spent roughly $30 billion in the last few years to help them, with mixed results.
Depends on who wants what land or who owns what land. If you think local politicians aren’t up the asses of your local elite, I’d say you’re being way too kind.
Perhaps I misled by using the word “grassroots.” The local elite are the NIMBYs. Their selfish interests as homeowners collectively greatly outweigh the business interests of the tiny minority of them who are property developers.
In other words, consider the archetypal mansion neighborhood way too close to the city center (for example: Tuxedo Park in Atlanta), whose single-family, large lot zoning physically displaces tens of thousands of people who could have been living there if development were allowed to meet demand. Even if the filthy-rich developers living there wanted to buy out their neighbors and profit fabulously from meeting that demand – and they don’t, because they themselves live there – they can’t because their neighbors are doctors and lawyers and CEOs and celebrities who are just as rich and powerful as they are and would never stand for it.
That’s fair. I’m in a small/mid sized city that’s still expanding into the neighboring towns so the impact is really bad at times.