Every city and town had them. They were the old men on small pensions nodding on park benches or leaning up against buildings with their hands clutching small bottles of Night Train, Thunderbird, or rotgut whiskey wrapped in brown paper sacks. The boarding houses and cheap hotels they inhabited were called “flophouses” or “rat traps.” The elevators and stairwells smelled of urine and Lysol. Some, like Louis X (not his […]
Affordable housing California
Edging toward homelessness: “A human catastrophe of historic dimensions…”
In a sweeping survey of housing needs in the San Joaquin Valley, the California Housing Partnership and the California Coalition for Rural Housing have concluded that the Valley needs 137,254 more affordable homes. Among the most troubling findings was that many hard-working Valley citizens live on the edge of homelessness because housing costs consume up to 70% of their incomes. Minimum wage earners are especially burdened. Of the eight Valley […]