SF Chronicle Editorial Board: Build More Homes to Help the Homeless

The editorial board of the San Francisco Chronicle issued a pro-housing development challenge in no uncertain terms this week, using a recent study from UCLA that traced the connection between lack of housing supply, high housing prices, and increasing homelessness as its main source of evidence.

After listing study after study that shifts blame toward the housing market and away from 'complex social pathologies, drug usage, or deficiencies in mental health treatments,' the editorial puts the responsibility for the state's homeless crisis on the politicians, property owners, and special interests who control land use in the state:

To acknowledge the housing shortage as essential to homelessness is to connect its cruelties to every Californian who objects to more housing in his or her neighborhood and every politician who defers to such demands. Perhaps that’s why we hear so much about the other causes of homelessness.