Emeryville's Congresswoman on Worker Wages & CEO Pay

Emeryville's representative in the United States Congress, Barbara Lee, weighs in on inequality in her district and America as a whole.  Ms Lee is concerned about increasing poverty and how worker's wages haven't kept up with productivity gains.  Emeryville, as a major business locus affecting the greater region, has many large corporations operating from within our boundaries.  Food for thought as Emeryville considers increasing the minimum wage in town, now set at $9 per hour.

CEOs Are Rewarded for Keeping Their Employees in Poverty.  

It's Time to Change That.

By Rep Barbara Lee

In 1978, the average American worker earned enough to raise a family, buy a house and save for a retirement. Adjusted for inflation, these workers were paid an average salary of $47,200 — a middle class paycheck.  
By comparison, the average annual CEO pay in the 1970s was around a million dollars; or nearly 30 times the pay of the average worker in their company.

In the intervening four decades, these inequities have ballooned. In fact, the story of the late 20th century is the decline of the American middle class and the rise of the super wealthy.  
CEO pay has increased by 937 percent since 1978. If the average American worker had seen similar gains in pay, she would be earning $480,460 a year.

For most American families that income is a pipe dream.  Since 1987, pay for the average worker has barely budged while the cost of everything — milk, gas, college tuition — has gone up and up. Families got squeezed as prices rose and paychecks froze.

Tragically, families who once worked their way into the middle class are now sliding into poverty.

Communities of color have been especially hard hit by the decline of the middle class. African Americans are more likely to live in poverty and experience unemployment. Seventy percent of African Americans who grow up in middle income families will see their personal income fall below their parents.  Languishing wages force families to choose between necessities: a secure retirement or sending a child to college? Repairing a leaking roof or a broken car? Back-to-school shopping or replacing a winter coat that’s too small? Paying the rent or buying groceries?

While these families are making impossible decisions, corporate executives are enjoying unimaginable wealth.

Few realize that CEO bonuses and “performance pay” are subsidized by the American people. Corporations are given major tax breaks for providing exorbitant compensation.  Surely we can agree that corporations don’t need taxpayers to subsidize massive CEO pay — pay that’s grown nearly 1000 percent since 1978.

In America, corporations and executives are playing with a deck stacked against hardworking families.  And the Republican response to this profound income inequality has been a collective yawn.  It’s wrong for any business to keep workers in poverty while padding CEO’s wallets.  It’s even worse that some of these same businesses take huge tax deductions for millions in bonuses.

Clearly, our tax code is not designed to work for all Americans — just the select few.

My bill, the Income Equity Act, prohibits employers from taking tax deductions for excessive compensation — defined as any pay more than 25 times that of the company’s median wage worker or $500,000.  Congress should get to work for hardworking families, not millionaires and billionaires that want to get even richer on the backs of taxpayers.

The Tattler Celebrates Five Years

The Emeryville Tattler turned five in February and we're re-posting some of our favorite stories and the reader's favorites during our month-long celebration.  As the news cycle permits, look to see some of these oldies but goodies re-blasted. 

We continue the celebration with a piece from Sunday June 5, 2011.

The Emeryville Tattler's reporting has been a force for change at City Hall since its inception and this 2011 story has been perhaps the most influential of all.  

Emeryville politicians now universally agree there needs to be more family friendly housing built in our town.  It wasn't always like that.  Many residents had for years challenged the City Council to get developers to build more of this kind of housing, especially after the School District took on the task of rebuilding the schools with the Center of 'Community' Life project.  But for decades, the Council showed no interest in family friendly housing, deferring instead strictly to market forces.  That all changed after the Tattler released this story that depicted a dysfunctional Emeryville within the Bay Area through an unflattering independent report from the University of California.   

Here's the story, titled "Scathing Emeryville Housing Report Released", one of our faves: 

June 5, 2011

Long Anticipated Goldman Report Released:

Report: Council bungled unprecedented boom, leaving Emeryville and its schools in disarray, downward spiral

Emeryville's leaders have squandered unprecedented opportunities over the last quarter century in their rush to reconstruct a crumbling industrial core into a retail Mecca. Rather than an urban oasis, leaders have delivered a gleaming, yet demographically unstable post-industrial city, according to a new report from UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy.

The May 5th report titled Building a Community: Affordable Family-Friendly Housing in Emeryville  found that giving housing developers a free hand has resulted in a preponderance of one-bedroom apartments and trendy open-plan lofts, but a dearth of housing suitable for growing families.

The report faults the council for refusing to use its authority to compel developers to produce housing that meets the needs of the real world. Instead, the council's laissez-faire coda has allowed development firms to deliver a plethora of cheaper-to-construct lofts and jam more, smaller units, into a building of the same footprint, maximizing profits.

With only a handful of family appropriate housing units, Emeryville has become increasingly a transient city, a place young people depart once singles begin pairing off and starting families.

New Emeryville housing: One 

bedroom units with parking 

on the ground level.

City Council Neglectful

The Goldman report blasts Emeryville, noting that families with children constitutes only 7 percent of the total population, a number that is "exceedingly low" compared to 33 percent nationally.  What few families do make a home in Emeryville, have a tendency to leave as their children get to be of school age because, "the housing developments do not meet the needs of growing families," according to the report.

Further, the report sees few encouraging signs for improvement in the near term. The city council continues to abdicate its responsibility to attain a more balanced mix of units from developers for at least the next three years. "While the city is expecting to increase its housing stock by 64% over the next 30 years, this will most likely not ameliorate the issue because, of the 1,281 new dwelling units the city has issued building permits to be built by 2014, the vast majority are more single bedroom luxury condos and apartments."

Open plan (no bedrooms) lofts 

turns their backs to the street; 

not conducive for families. 

Schools Pay The Price

The report also links poor student achievement within the Emery Unified School District in part on the lack of family housing.

The report's author, Master of Public Policy candidate Homayra Yusufi, is unequivocal; "Without adequate housing that accommodates the needs of families and encourages a strong sense of community, it will be difficult for the [school] district to increase enrollment and improve academic outcomes".

Ms. Yusufi notes that research demonstrates a "strong link" between housing and education. "The negative impacts of the lack of adequate housing can be seen in Emery Unified School District in that the district has considerably high attrition rates, which are constantly substituted by incoming inter-district transfers.  Due to the small size of the district, this greatly affects the district's overall academic performance".

One bedroom condos above,
empty retail below.

The lack of adequate family housing contributes to a high level of school "mobility"--- families that frequently move, enroll their children in different schools.  The report notes that high levels of mobility reduces academic performance by degrading the cohesive school environment and "greatly hinders the ability of teachers to teach effectively within the classroom".  Teachers are constantly being forced to assist new students and must backtrack and reteach information to the new students who are lagging behind, the report noted.

No Family Housing, No Accident

Emeryville's Redevelopment Agency, with its state mandated requirement that no less than 20 percent of all new housing be affordable, hasn't been any help in delivering family friendly housing.  The report notes that, left to their own devices, developers will not build family friendly housing since there is more profit in building single bedroom condos or lofts.  Since the Emeryville city council hasn't pushed developers to build family housing, the affordable housing that has been produced has been almost uniformly one bedroom units.  The report goes on to say Emeryville's affordable housing  "has mainly attracted senior citizens and disabled persons without children".

Even as the population has surged over the past two decades, Emeryville has actually lost families.  The housing breakdown in terms of newly constructed units since 2008 is illustrative of the city's lack of will to build family housing.  The report shows just 4 percent of the newly built housing are single family units, a number the report calls an "extremely low percentage, even for the Bay Area."

More one bedroom units but with
a twist; below is parking and a
shopping mall.

Emeryville's Housing Committee, hand selected by the city council, has placed concern over this issue on the back burner.  The issue was not seen fit to be included in the committee's list of seven goals for housing city-wide included in the "Housing Element" the committee contributed to the city's general plan.

In a bright spot, the report noted that residents nevertheless appear willing to support their schools as evidenced by the recent approval of Measure J, aimed at rebuilding Emeryville's school facilities. The report suggests that this may spill over to residents asking or even demanding that the city build new family friendly housing to support the school investment.

School District Refutes Tattler Story

School District Fights Back:

 Superintendent They Say,
Only Wasted About $79,000

The Emery Unified School District, in a notice sent to Emery school teachers, has expressed their displeasure regarding a February 12th Tattler story that disclosed the Superintendent of the Schools John Rubio, wasted about $100,000 by hiring a disgraced former elementary school principal and they want Emeryville parents and residents to know the amount the District wasted by the ill fated hire was really closer to $79,000.  Put another way, the District saved taxpayers some $21,000 with the disclosure.
The difference is the amount the District had to pay to fight off a possible lawsuit from the former principal Russom Mesfun; the Tattler reported up to $31,000 was spent on that but the actual amount turned out to be about $13,000.  That amount plus the salary and benefits (about $66,000) paid to Mr Mesfun, who never actually worked as a principal for Emery, totaled about $79,000.
Until the Tattler story of February 12th, Emery refused to publicly say how much by way of salary and benefits they paid to Mr Mesfun let alone how much of an allotted $31,000 for District legal bills was earmarked to fight Mr Mesfun.

Board Member
Christian Patz
After an internet search,
voted NO on hiring Mesfun.
He warned his colleagues 
against the hire.

Mr Mesfun was put on paid administrative leave before the first day of school last August reportedly after teachers complained of being harassed by the new principal.  The District hired Mr Mesfun by a vote of the School Board after Superintendent Rubio gave him the thumbs up.  The Tattler reported on the controversial pick by Mr Rubio after a Google search revealed a sordid history of chaos and firings by previous school districts that employed him including one district that was successfully sued by its teachers for harassment by Mr Mesfun.
Superintendent Rubio has told Emeryville residents and property owners, those who have had to pay for the misguided hiring of the former principal, he is ultimately responsible for the hiring of Mr Musfun, however it should be noted every Emery School Board member available to vote except Mr Christian Patz voted YES on Russom Mesfun last summer.
Board member Patz, the lone holdout among his colleagues against Mr Mesfun, told the Tattler, "In late July of last year, some parents came to me with concerns about the new principal selected for Anna Yates [Elementary School].  They told me to do an internet search for him and referred me to the Emeryville Tattler.  What I saw online gave me pause.  In talking with Mr Mesfun directly, I did not feel he was the right person to lead our flagship school.  I could not vote to approve the hiring".  The other Board members all voted to hire Mr Mesfun except Board president John Affeldt who was out of town for the vote.  Mr Affeldt did express his approval of Mr Mesfun at the time sources tell the Tattler.

Board Member
Joy Ashe
Voted YES on hiring Mesfun.

Board President
John Affeldt
Was out of town for the 
Mesfun vote but expressed 
approval for the hire.

Board Member
Melodi Dice
Voted YES on hiring Mesfun,

The Tattler Celebrates Five Years

The Emeryville Tattler turned five in February and we're re-posting some of our favorite stories and the reader's favorites during our month-long celebration.  As the news cycle permits, look to see some of these oldies but goodies re-blasted. 

We continue the celebration with a piece from Thursday 12/26/2013.
It's an opinion/news analysis about how all the low wage/ low benefit fast food and retail built by the City Council majority over a generation has been undercutting resident's values and about how the pernicious effects of this glut of service sector jobs can be offset by worker owned co-operatives.  With the minimum wage story so much in the news of late, these worker owned kinds of service jobs can leapfrog past the usurious and oppressive model offered by standard corporate fare and other bottom line driven business models.  It was presented in 2013 but it's relevant today. 

Here's the story, titled "'Worker Owned Co-Operatives' Needed to Restore Emeryville's Tarnished Reputation", one of our reader's faves: 

December 26, 2013

A Large Corporate Low Wage Service Sector 

Makes For a Town Without a Soul 

We Need Living Wage Jobs

Enter Worker Owned Co-Ops

Opinion/News Analysis

There's been much public debate in Emeryville over the years over how to best develop our town even as City Hall long ago settled on a pro-developer course, regardless of the debate.  As a result of this willful ignorance, many have come to rightfully condemn Emeryville decision makers over the flawed auto-centric model of development those decision makers have brought to our town over the last 20 some odd years.  This model, favored by developers, has brought us lots of shopping malls and drive-in drive-out lofts (formally condos, now morphing into one bedroom 100% rental projects).

This is well understood by Emeryville residents as our town's once unique character is eroded and the streets become ever more clogged with traffic.

But what's been debated less is how this model, resplendent with fast food franchises and retail chain stores, also brings a plethora of low wage/ no benefits service jobs that seem to be attached at the hip with this brand of development.  So ubiquitous now is this kind of development in Emeryville, minimum wage/ zero benefits service sector jobs have fairly come to be seen as representative of Emeryville and its values by the greater community.

This is who we are at this point, like it or not.

This is Emeryville
Minimum wage / no benefits;
the corporate service sector is
who we now are.

As Emeryville starts a new building spree in the wake of a recovering regional economy and with a finite amount of land left to develop, we need a new development model to fill out our town, one that will temper our 20 year binge of alienating, unsustainable and usurious development.  We need a new paradigm of public policy out of City Hall to create retail service sector jobs that pay a living wage and treat their workers with respect and dignity.  We need to become a model for how cities can move forward instead of a model for what's gone wrong in the Bay Area and beyond.

Attracting worker owned co-operatives to our town offers us the chance to remake our image and reclaim a city that more properly reflects our values.

Formerly known as a mecca for high paying mostly blue collar jobs in the East Bay, Emeryville long ago jettisoned that mantle, now instead there's been a wholesale embracing of the corporate low wage service sector model.  In so doing, not only have we thrown our town over to cars and all the degraded environment that comes with that, we also have shirked our civic moral duties to build a town that works for everybody.  The fact that we didn't shirk these duties in the past means we can do it again.  We can create a new municipal polity.

Enter Worker Owed Co-Ops

Businesses where the workers themselves own the enterprise represent a different model for how retail stores and other business can be refashioned in Emeryville.  These worker owned businesses offer a living wage and benefits for their workers. They also offer Emeryville residents a moral choice as they comport their daily transactions in the commons.

 So what exactly is a worker owned co-op?  The Network of Bay Area Worker Cooperatives (NoBAWC or "no boss"), the oldest and largest regional association of democratic workplaces in the United States, tell us these kinds of businesses are enterprises that produce goods, distributes goods and/or provides services and are owned and democratically controlled by its worker-owners.  Worker owned cooperatives generally have comparable or better pay (salary/wages plus profit-sharing) and benefits than comparably-sized conventional businesses in similar industries.  This is because the worker-owners decide what percentage of profits will go to themselves and what percentage will be retained by the cooperative.  Moreover, worker cooperatives don’t have overpaid managers, owners and outside shareholders who siphon money from the business.  These businesses allow money spent by residents to stay in the community, bolstering the local economy.  Worker owned co-ops run the gamut on types of businesses from bike shops and restaurants to web services, financial services and bookstores.  Just about any business can be a worker owned co-op.

Emeryville already has two such worker owned co-ops right now, San Pablo Avenue's Arizmendi Bakery and Pedal Express, a bicycle courier company on Powell Street. 

Pedal Express

Pedal Express is the East Bay's only bicycle courier company.  They have been worker owned and operated for the past twenty years and perhaps ironically count the City of Emeryville as one of their clients.

Co-owner Dominic Lucchesi says Pedal Express offers a different vision from Emeryville's current business sector model.  He told the Tattler, "Cooperatives provide long-term job opportunities with growth potential.  We at Pedal Express pride ourselves on paying a living wage, offering meaningful benefits, and encouraging flexibility and creativity.  The cooperative model also provides workers with a sense of ownership and connection to their community and its businesses.  These desirable qualities are often lacking in the low-paying service sector jobs that are all too common in today's corporate franchises and big box stores."

Arizmendi Bakery vs Panera Bakery

Arizmendi Bakery has operated at 4301 San Pablo Avenue since 2003 after former councilman John Fricke worked to attract the popular cooperative to the newly built Emeryville Promenade amid skeptical colleagues on the Council.  The bakery has been extremely popular offering a locally owned counter point to the national chain restaurant  I-HOP also in the Promenade development.

Arizmendi Bakery and Panera Bakery on 40th Street offers us a chance to directly compare the two business models:

Arizmendi Bakery (worker owned cooperative model)-

• pays at least $16 per hour
• full health insurance and dental coverage for all
• worker owned and democratically run
• worker/owners share in year end profits
• stipends paid for work related purchases
• five Bay Area locations
• Emeryville store is independently owned

Panera Bakery (standard Emeryville corporate model)-

• pays employees $8.06 per hour
• no benefits
• stockholder owned and run by CEO and Board of Directors
• more than 1500 locations across the US and Canada
• corporate headquarters in St Louis MO
• Emeryville unit sends its profits to the corporate headquarters

Worker owned cooperatives have also been shown to increase social justice and stability.  Cal Berkeley graduate student Amanda Cook, wrote a 2009 thesis documenting this benefit.  From her study, "In many conventional workplaces, workers perceive their interests as opposing corporate interests. Worker cooperatives, on the other hand, promote the idea that business practices should be compatible with everyone’s interests. Instead of becoming a battleground for individual and corporate interests, worker cooperatives adopt a family-like atmosphere of support, mutual responsibility, and, of course, cooperation."    

Ms Cook documents how worker cooperatives provide benefit to workers and the surrounding community in three major ways; she shows how this work "...is intrinsically valuable, participatory democracy is an educational activity, and active participation in decision making in one social sphere is likely to encourage active participation in other spheres."

The plight of minimum and low wage workers has been much in the news recently as fast food and other workers take to the streets to protest.  The corporate model is cruel and not sustainable.  These workers cannot survive on these wages and many are forced to use food stamps and other government provided services to make ends meet. Besides being an unethical abdication of government duty, this model represents a transfer of wealth from the taxpayers to the wealthy.  Emeryville has been complicit in this.

However Dave Karoly of NoBAWC says it doesn't have to be this way, "There is no reason why there can't be more than two worker owned cooperatives in Emeryville.  The establishment of more (worker) cooperatives in Emeryville would help change the perception of people living outside Emeryville that the city is just a destination for retail chain shopping" he told the Tattler.

The Emeryville Chamber of Commerce, historically an advocacy group for Emeryville's largest corporations on the other hand doesn't appear to be comfortable with such worker empowerment talk.  Chamber CEO Bob Canter was contacted for this story but he refused to comment.

Developers, itching to take advantage of a newly favorable market (especially in rental properties), are loading up the agendas at the Planning Commission and at City Council meetings.  A glut of new residential development is moving forward towards permit approval at City Hall from the Sherwin Williams project to the Avalon Bay project, to the Market Place development to the (just approved) Maz project, and there's more in the pipeline.  These development proposals all contain retail components along their respective street fronts.  This is where a new polity of worker owned cooperatives can be developed.

We need to realize how un-radical this whole idea is....or should be.  Neighboring cities are expanding these cooperatives and they're realizing the benefits.  Indeed, our own General Plan requires us to approve development that provides jobs for Emeryville residents.  These low wage service sector jobs aren't cutting it.  Workers at these jobs have to travel to our town for their employment since these corporate service jobs don't pay enough to afford to live in Emeryville.  This type of retail and fast food development is expressly forbidden by Emeryville's General Plan and yet there doesn't seem to be much of an interest among the decision makers at City Hall to rectify this.

Emeryville's new mayor Jac Asher is an outlier.  She agrees worker owned cooperatives offer a better way for Emeryville moving forward and she has publicly called for it.

We like Mayor Asher's idea; let's start adding these worker owned neighborhood enhancing kinds of retail establishments as conditions of approval for these incipient development proposals across town.  We've had more than our share of the neighborhood degrading and morally bankrupt low wage service sector development here thank you.  Let's finally start the job of making a livable town here in Emeryville.

Guest Column: John Bauters

John Bauters is a resident of Emeryville and currently serves on the City’s Housing Committee and the Emery Unified School District’s Measure “K” Parcel Tax Oversight Committee. John is the Policy Director at Housing California, the state’s leading non-profit legislative advocacy organization on policy that impacts housing affordability and homelessness. 

HOMELESSNESS AND HOUSING FIRST

A TINY WINDOW INTO THE AMERICAN HISTORY OF HOMELESSNESS
by John Bauters

Homelessness, and its history in the United States, is a largely untold story. To understand 

the origins of homelessness, one need not look much farther than the high school civic 

book. Colonial expansion was wrought with land skirmishes that disenfranchised settlers 

of land and home. The end of the Civil War and the subsequent institutionalization of 

racism in things like the New Deal's lending programs resulted in millions of African-

Americans from being locked out of home ownership opportunities. Broken promises 

with Native American tribes spurned the creation of reservations that offered no housing 

or resources. The economic fallout of the Great Depression, followed by the subsequent 

and insufficient regulation of the market has inequitably punished lower income and 

working families for a century. Perverse regulations in the early administration of Social 
Security and other institutionalized welfare programs – even if unintentionally racist – 

disproportionately and adversely affected women and non-white families, blocking 

millions of families from building wealth and transferring assets between generations 

– a key predictor of housing stability. The obliteration of HUD funding and rescission 

of America’s modest safety net programs in the 1980’s removed some of the last 

protections that kept poor, working families from the streets. Today, the ever-growing 

gap in wage earnings, the lost bargaining power of workers for things like health 

coverage and daycare, and the lack of investment in affordable housing exacerbate 

America’s ever-growing homelessness problem.

CRUNCHING NUMBERS

The point-in-time, or “PIT” count, which takes places annually during the last week 

of January, is an attempt to estimate the number of people who experience 

homelessness on a given night in the United States.  According to HUD's most 

recent report on homelessness, there are nearly 600,000 people in the United States 

who fit the federal definition of homelessness. The federal definition of 

homelessness, encoded in the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, is rather 

prescriptive. Advocates have long complained that PIT counts undercount children 

and youth, fail to include people who are marginally housed (i.e. living on a friend’s 

couch or in a relative’s basement because they lack the resources to house 

themselves) and that the process of collecting the data is inconsistently administered 

across jurisdictions. Although admittedly imperfect, PIT counts offer us a general 

sense of what homelessness looks like in the United States and is one of the few 

tools policy experts and advocates have for identifying gaps in existing policy 

and practices that would help reduce the number of people living without access 

to housing.

THE CALIFORNIAN REALITY

California holds several dubious distinctions related to homelessness. Not only 

do more than 20% of the people who experience homelessness in the United States 

reside here (by contrast, California is home to 12% of the general population, which 

means our homelessness rate exceeds our residential rate when compared with 

the national average), but we also have the largest number of unsheltered people 

experiencing homelessness as well.  According to the most recent Annual 

Homelessness Assessment Report (AHAR) issued by HUD in October 2014, 62.7% 

of those experiencing homelessness in California have no access to shelter of any 

kind. Even worse, on a local level, nearby San Jose and Santa Clara County have 

the highest rates of people living without shelter nationally. California is also home 

to the highest number of veterans who experience homelessness, with 

approximately 24% of all homeless veterans living here in California. And perhaps 

worst, 13,709 unaccompanied homeless children and youth live in California. These 

children are often victims of sex trafficking and other abuses, which helps explain 

why California also has the dubious distinction of being a leader in that category as well.

THE BIG PICTURE: A STEP TOWARD SOLUTIONS

For years, advocates, elected officials and communities have fought over how to address 

the problem of homelessness and the ancillary problems that come from having large 

numbers of unsheltered people in a community. The Bay Area and Emeryville are not 

immune to these challenges. Developing solutions for the complex problem that 

homelessness presents is as much a quest to solve for the social and fiscal problems 

affecting individuals and families in our society as it is a quest to create communities 

that are more livable, affordable, hospitable and humane.

It might surprise some that the solution to homelessness, in its most basic conceptual 

form, is quite simple: house people.

Yes, house them.

For decades, the federal government, local communities, funders and even homeless 

service providers have utilized a carrot and stick approach to solving homelessness: 

“If you get treatment for your mental illness, we will be able to provide you with 

housing assistance.” “In order for us to offer you a bed in our shelter, you must be 

clean and sober for 30 days.” “We can only offer housing subsidies to people who 

have already obtained some form of employment.”

This approach is significantly flawed. The chances that a person with a serious 

mental illness can be compliant with medication or treatment in the absence of 

intensive care or therapy while trying to survive on the street is infinitesimally 

small. People who suffer from addiction and substance use disorders have 

psychological and physiological cravings that are abetted by being left among 

the social environment that enables their addiction to persist, making self-induced 

sobriety on the streets as unlikely as winning the lottery for most. And the ability to 

apply for work, be rested for work, prepare for work and physically get to work is 

minimal when you lack a warm, safe and stable place to sleep each night.

HOUSING FIRST

The proper approach and the only successful solution to homelessness require 

embracing a "housing first” model.  Studies show that people who are offered 

housing assistance find employment faster, have fewer health issues, respond 

better to mental health and substance use treatment and experience fewer 

encounters with law enforcement.  If the thought of government financing 

housing for the homeless bothers you, let’s examine how much it really costs us:

A study on the cost of chronic homelessness by the Massachusetts Home 
and Healthy for Good Program found that the average cost for measured 

services (Medicaid costs, emergency shelter, law enforcement/incarceration) 

per person annually was $33,190. After employing a Housing First approach 

by housing the chronically homeless individual and providing wrap around 

supports, the same cost for those measured services fell to an average of $8,603. 

When you add back in the affirmative cost of providing comprehensive housing 

and supportive services to help make the program work, at a cost of $15,468 per 

tenant, the total return on investment to the state and local governments was an 

average of $9,118 per person.

What is missing from this analysis is something that doesn’t get crunched in 

numbers: social outcomes. Fewer people rely on hospitals and emergency services, 

scarce shelter beds become accessible to others when people in them become 

housed, the number of people living unsheltered drops, and the reduced demand for 

law enforcement and correctional services all make communities more livable.

In fact, if you want any more simple proof about how the lives of people who 

experience chronic homelessness are improved by housing them, look no further 

than Project 25. San Diego decided to house 35 chronically homeless individuals 

who were among the highest consumers of state and local emergency services 

and provide them with supportive services under a Housing First approach. The 

results were dramatic, to say the least.  In the 12 months prior to the project, those 

35 individuals alone spent a whopping total of 1,505 days in hospital care. 

Comparatively, two years into the program, that rate is down to 568, a reduction 

of 64%. Other communities like Charlotte, North Carolina and Salt Lake City, Utah

have already paved the path with success.

HOUSING AS HEALTH

Housing is a social determinant for public health and healthy communities. I had 

the pleasure of being a panelist at a recent convening held by the Alameda County 

Department of Senior Services on how housing improves health outcomes, which 

in turn makes communities not only more healthy, but safer. Aging and senior 

services are looking at ways to invest in solutions for people that allow them to 

age in place as opposed to receive institutionalized or nursing home care, which 

are far more expensive and lower the social health of seniors by removing them 

from their homes. Health officials and senior advocates already see that improving 

the quality, affordability and accessibility of housing improves health outcomes. 

So why stop there?

People who experience chronic homelessness have some of the greatest unmet 

needs and are subject to the most dangerous of health risks. Their lack of shelter 

and services decreases the affordability of general services we all share in as 

residents of the community and the lack of resources designed to meet their 

basic human needs decreases the livability of our community. If you want to learn 

more about how housing is a social determinant for health, read this white paper by 

the Corporation for Supportive Housing, one of the leading advocacy groups for 

supportive housing and a partner of mine in advocating for a “Housing First” approach 

to homelessness.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Funding the development of affordable, permanent, supportive housing is the single-

best long term solution to homelessness. Federal cuts to HUD due to sequestration, 

uninspiring leadership from Governor Brown on this issue at the state level and a 

lack of political will to fund housing solutions by a handful of legislators to address 

this issue leaves some of the problem-solving to local and regional groups. The problem 

cannot be resolved by a single local government alone. However, we can do our part. 

I ascribe to a simple philosophy: “Think globally, act locally.” Promoting affordable 

development and recognizing that solutions for people living in deep poverty or 

experiencing homelessness are not going to be solved by naïve notions of achieving 

affordability through simple “supply and demand” economics are major steps.  We 

must model local solutions for homelessness in such a way that breaks us from our 

untenable trajectory. Good social policy and good fiscal policy are not mutually 

exclusive. Providing a place for the housing first approach in the way we develop 

going forward, investing in permanent supportive housing and meeting the needs of 

everyone who calls Emeryville “home” are all steps toward creating a more livable, 

just community.