San Diego Activists Form Coalition to Respond to Homelessness, Housing Crisis

Labor activists, environmentalists, and social justice advocates have formed an alliance in San Diego, where meaningful action to provide affordable housing and to address homelessness lags the state's other major cities. The coalition is named Build Better San Diego. The city's housing costs are among the highest in the nation, and the city's homeless population is fourth largest in the nation. The coalition's focus on non-profit groups is, according to Baxamusa, because: 

. . . we are skeptical of the establishment players and institutions that have done little to address the build-up of this crisis over the past decade. The mantra of “housing affordability” is often co-opted by those that profit from the crisis, by escaping accountability and taking advantage of our situation to build anything, anywhere, most often at high prices and low wages, and without regard to community impacts.

Baxamusa lists members of the coalition: 

It’s growing membership includes San Diego Building and Construction Trades Council, Partnership for Advancement of New Americans, Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), Climate Action Campaign, Justice Overcoming Boundaries, Think Dignity, Planned Parenthood, Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Local 30, Sierra Club Chapter on San Diego, United Taxi Workers of San Diego, and LaCava Consulting. The coalition intends to advocate for preserving and increasing access to permanently affordable quality homes, jobs and transit for all San Diegans.

Baxamusa describes the coalition's "guiding principles":

1. Focus the region’s limited resources on meeting the most-pressing housing needs, i.e. people who don’t have a home or low and moderate income families paying a disproportionate percentage of their income for housing.
2. Support creation of jobs paying family-supporting wages.
3. Require all communities to take responsibility for making their housing accessible to people at various income levels, especially local workers, people with disabilities and seniors on fixed incomes.
4. Protect the region’s natural resources and support its goals to reduce our carbon emissions by locating homes near jobs, transit and services.
5. Ensure existing residents can remain in their community.
6. Support tenant protections that help ensure safe and affordable housing.
7. Solve homelessness with an achievable goal for addressing short and long term housing needs.
8. Build for a long-term movement to ensure all San Diegans have housing.