California voters say housing is important. Here’s where Newsom recall candidates stand

Housing and homelessness remain top issues for California voters, and several recall candidates are emphasing the state’s high cost of living in their campaigns.

The issues are ones that affect millions of Californians, as the number of homeless people in the state is growing and the median price of a single-family home tops $811,000.

Now, California voters get to have their say, as they consider whether to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom from office.

Ballots have gone out in the mail. Voters are being asked to choose whether Newsom should be removed from office and, if so, which of 46 candidates on the ballot should replace him.

Only a handful of the recall candidate have gained any significant traction in polls.

Here’s where they, as well as Newsom, stand on housing and homelessness.

Gavin Newsom

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom made tackling California’s housing and homelessness two of his top priorities, although they remained persistent crises during his administration.

He championed Project Homekey, a state-funded program that made money available to cities, counties and other public entities to purchase hotels, motels, vacant apartment buildings and other buildings and turn into long-term housing for the homeless.

In May, he also announced a $12 billion program to take on homelessness, money that would help pay for 46,000 new housing units to get people off the street, Newsom said.

“What we’re announcing here today is truly transformative. What we’re announcing here today is truly historic. It’s unprecedented not just in California history, but what we’re announcing here today is simply unprecedented in American history,” Newsom said at a press conference at the time.

That same proposal called for setting aside $1.75 billion for affordable housing and $1.5 billion to clean up California’s roadways and public spaces.

However, Newsom has thus far fallen short of his 2018 campaign pledge to build 3.5 million housing units by 2025. The state built more than 100,000 units in 2020, but would need to build 500,000 annually to meet Newsom’s pledge.

John Cox

Republican John Cox offered a “beastly solution” to solve California’s homelessness crisis: He supports mandatory substance abuse and mental health treatment for homeless people before they are provided with housing. As his campaign puts it, it is “compliance born of compassion.”

As for housing, Cox, who is a real estate developer in the Midwest, says that the cost of building is an issue for California. He said the approval process to break ground simply breaks the bank for too many real estate developers.

“I build for a living. Most of my building is done in Indiana, I can build there for $125 a square foot. Here in California, it’s $450, $500 a foot, ... you’re never going to make it affordable when it’s that expensive,” Cox said at a recent debate.

He says that the price is driven up by the California Environmental Quality Act, also known as CEQA, which requires environmental reviews before construction and allows neighbors or other interested parties to challenge building proposals.

“I can get approvals in six to 12 months in Indiana, and I assure you that people in Indiana care about the environment, they care about traffic, they care about building standards,” Cox said.

Larry Elder

Republican Larry Elder has vowed to declare “a homeless emergency” if he is elected governor. He explained what that meant in an interview with several McClatchy opinion editors in early August.

“The homelessness emergency would be done to suspend CEQA so that I can unleash the developers and contractors, who would be able to build low-cost housing and low-cost apartments,” Elder said in that interview.

He has said that some homeless people are a danger to the public and should be locked up in mental health institutions.

“The rest of them are probably alcoholics, mentally ill, or have substance abuse problems, and they need to be treated,” Elder said.

Elder said he supports a plan — which he said was championed by Ben Carson, Housing and Urban Development secretary under President Donald Trump, and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti — “that was a large amount of government land in California that would not be burdened by government regulations so low-cost housing could be built cheaply.”

Kevin Faulconer

Republican Kevin Faulconer, the former mayor of San Diego, has said that he would “take a red pen” to regulations that he argues are driving up the price of apartments and houses in California.

At a recent debate, Faulconer touted his ability to work with a Democratic super-majority-controlled San Diego City Council to increase housing in the city “where we want it, along our transit corridors.”

“We have to make housing more affordable in Caliornia, and I will take the same types of steps I took as mayor,” Faulconer said.

The former San Diego mayor said that he was able to reduce homelessness in his city by 12%, and as governor he would expand mental health services and addiction treatment.

“And he will clean up the garbage and filth generated by encampments that are not only eyesores but public health hazards,” his campaign website reads.

Kevin Kiley

Republican Kevin Kiley, the state assemblyman from Rocklin, says that CEQA should be reformed and the approval process for construction should be streamlined.

At a recent debate, he declined to say whether he would commit to signing a package of bills that would make changes including building small apartment buildings in existing residential neighborhoods or turning unused commercial properties into housing.

“Well, it’s hard to commit to signing or not signing a bill in the abstract,” Kiley said in response to the question. “There is a lot of things we need to be doing about housing.”

On the subject of homelessness, Kiley says that he supports “a smarter and more compassionate approach to homelessness, focused on evidence-based services to address underlying causes — including mental illness and drug addiction — and to transition people into permanent housing,” according to his campaign website.

Kevin Paffrath

Democrat Kevin Paffrath, who dispenses real estate advice on his YouTube channel, says that California is not building nearly enough homes — he argued at a recent debate that the state needs at minimum 300,000 homes per year to make housing more affordable.

“We need to build hundreds of thousands of homes throughout California, ideally half a million homes per year,” he said.

Paffrath wants to see those homes built outside of large cities, preferably around solar and wind energy farms.

He has pledged to end homelessness in California within 60 days, by placing all homeless people in “emergency housing,” though he has not explained where that housing would be located or how it would be acquired.

“These facilities are OPTIONAL. However, NO homeless person will sleep on the streets of California after 60 days (this is already illegal),” Paffrath writes on his website.