7-Day Advocacy Challenge
day 6: housing affordability
affordable housing is the only real, long-term solution to homelessness
Homelessness is not a defining personal characteristic or lifestyle choice — rather, it’s what happens to someone when they can no longer afford a place to live. In Los Angeles, rising rents combined with stagnant wages mean that an estimated 500,000 households are now experiencing severe rent-burden, or spending more than half of their income on housing; research also shows that individual female households are more likely to be rent-burdened due to the economic disparities discussed on Day 3. For unhoused women in Los Angeles, high housing costs and diminished earning potential are only compounded by sudden, life-changing events like domestic violence, job loss, and medical burden, which can then act to push them directly into homelessness.
What does all of this tell us? That access to permanent, affordable housing is the only real solution to homelessness and housing instability of any kind.
Join the challenge TODAY to learn more about Los Angeles’ affordable housing crisis and exciting new efforts to remedy it!
THE CHALLENGE
IF YOU HAVE:
POST
our social media asset of the day to your Instagram to help spread the word! You can also repost directly from our account @DWCweb on Instagram or retweet us on Twitter!
READ
this editorial from the Los Angeles Times on Our Future Los Angeles’ work to create an affordable housing agency, and click through to sign up for their action alerts!
WATCH
★ BONUS ROUNDS ★
Listen to this episode of the Housing Justice podcast about one woman’s struggle to keep up with rising rents in Los Angeles!
Buy or borrow from your local library Matthew Desmond’s Evicted: Poverty & Profit in the American City, which follows eight Milwaukee families as they struggle against the cycle of poverty, eviction, and housing instability!