California’s crushing housing shortage forces thousands of hard-working families who cannot afford extreme housing costs to leave our state, leaving employers from local restaurants to tech giants stuggling to find employees.
The most visible impact of our decades-long failure to build enough homes is on our streets, where the least-fortunate victims live in tents, RVs and sleeping bags. These are our neighbors, and they urgently need more homes.
But that is not what we’re offering.
Last month, Fremont joined many California cities by making it illegal to be a human without a house. By banning tents, RVs, and even sleeping bags in public, Fremont sent a clear message: The housing shortage isn’t our problem. With only 100 shelter beds for over 800 unhoused residents, our city chose punishment over compassion. This crackdown criminalizes people with nowhere else to go. This response reveals a deeper problem: We’re using enforcement to cover up our decades-long failure to build enough homes across the Bay Area and California.
Fremont’s 2024 Homelessness Response Plan emphasized prevention, housing and outreach. But the city chose criminalization, forcing providers like Abode Services to suspend aid due to legal risks. A lawsuit from unhoused residents, supported by the California Homeless Union and local faith leaders, now challenges the ordinance.
Cities across the East Bay are facing rising homelessness rooted in long-term housing shortages. Throughout the 2010s, California’s cities saw the lowest decade of homebuilding since the 1960s, even as our economy boomed. The Bay Area added only one new home for every six new jobs.
The predictable result: Alameda County rents jumped 26% from 2010 to 2021. By far the biggest beneficiaries are landlords who profit from scarcity to raise rents, with many openly praising the lack of overall supply as “good for business.” Rising rents are a primary cause of homelessness, which we cannot address until we fix the housing shortage.
To make progress, the state must clear roadblocks. A proposed bill, SB 79, would require cities to allow more homes near major transit stops — areas already connected to jobs and services. Currently, local laws often ban apartments within a half-mile of BART stations, explaining why 59 percent of low-income Bay Area households lack easy transit access. This would also address rising transportation costs and pollution from long car commutes.
Another bill, SB 677, targets exclusionary barriers in existing neighborhoods. About 65% of California homeowners live in homeowners associations (HOA) with rules blocking modest additions like duplexes or backyard cottages — often the most affordable options for families and aging residents. This bill would prevent HOAs from blocking new homes in communities that already have schools, parks, and transit nearby.
These bills support progressive legislators’ priorities: increasing access, reducing exclusion and rebalancing power away from those profiting from scarcity. They complement tenant protections and social housing by addressing the core problem — chronic underbuilding.
In addition to making it easier to build homes, local governments have humane alternatives to criminalization. Fremont should expand its 45-bed Navigation Center and establish a dedicated city-owned lot for people living in vehicles excluded from the current Safe Parking program. Most importantly, Fremont must completely repeal its camping ban. The solution lies in addressing our housing shortage, not punishment.
Nevertheless, we must accelerate homebuilding across our region. Homelessness results from our housing shortage and policies that ignore solutions. If we want stable communities where people of all incomes can live and work, we must end knee-jerk reactions to visible homelessness and start building the homes and services that will actually resolve the crisis.
David Bonaccorsi is a former Fremont councilmember and part of the Fremont for Everyone leadership team.