It shouldn’t be surprising: Orange County’s homeless population has increased by 28 percent, according to a new, federally mandated report. At the same time, Orange County continues to be Southern California’s most expensive rental market, with average rent at $2,657.
Sky-high rents, in other words, equal more homelessness. The only way to urgently help people is by expanding rent control.
One of the hard facts that real estate insiders, and even some reporters, like to ignore is that California’s housing affordability crisis is fueling the homelessness crisis – both of which are slamming Orange County residents. But a prominent study by UC San Francisco found that, without any doubt, excessive rents cause more homelessness. “People are homeless because their rent is too high,” Dr. Margot Kushel, the lead investigator of the UC San Francisco study, told the Associated Press last year.
With no exaggeration, lives are on the line. Recently, Eviction Lab, the prestigious research institute at Princeton University, found that increasingly unaffordable rents across the country are linked with higher mortality rates. According to Fullerton’s Father Dennis Kriz, dozens of people die “without fixed abode” in Orange County on a monthly basis, and he is right to publish their names as reminders of the stakes. The 2024 death count is currently 149 and counting. Clearly, sky-high rents and homelessness are intertwined, with people dying on the streets.
To save lives, Housing Is A Human Right advocates for a multi-pronged approach called the “3 Ps”: Protect tenants through rent control and other protections; preserve existing affordable housing, not demolish it to make way for luxury housing that few people can afford; and produce new affordable and homeless housing.
Rent control is particularly important: It will immediately stabilize the housing affordability crisis, rein in predatory landlords, and prevent people from falling into homelessness.
But don’t take our word for it. Top experts at the University of Southern California and UC Berkeley found that rent control will quickly stabilize sky-rocketing rents, and prominent economists recently wrote a letter to the Biden administration that said rent control will “protect tenants, stabilize neighborhoods, promote income diversity in regional economies, and improve the long-term outlook for housing affordability.”
The economists also made a point of stating that “rent regulation policies do not limit new construction, nor overall supply of housing.”
With so much at stake, Housing Is A Human Right and a broad coalition of housing justice groups, social justice organizations, labor unions, and civic leaders, including labor and civil rights icon Dolores Huerta, are fighting to end statewide rent control restrictions and allow cities to expand rent regulations. Housing Is A Human Right and its parent organization, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, are leading the charge.
Orange County residents have long advocated for rent control to rein in rising rents—from mobile park residents in Anaheim and Latino health workers in Costa Mesa to renters and housing activists in Santa Ana.
But corporate landlords and their lobbying organization, the California Apartment Association, are already raising millions to attack rent control. They don’t care that sky-high rents are forcing people into homelessness, and they don’t care that people are facing higher mortality rates. Big Real Estate just wants to protect its ability to charge higher and higher rents – no matter the consequences to the rest of us.
Don’t be fooled. In the end, allowing Orange County cities to expand rent control will quickly prevent people from falling into homelessness and save thousands of lives. It’s a tool that local elected officials must be allowed to utilize. The well-being of seniors on fixed incomes, middle- and working-class families, recent college graduates, and so many others depend on it.
Patrick Range McDonald is the award-winning advocacy journalist for Housing Is A Human Right.
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