California needs constitutional change to get serious about homelessness

I’m fortunate I wasn’t sexually assaulted while living on the streets of Los Angeles County. Many unhoused women are, and some repeatedly — though being attacked three times helped me qualify for a shelter bed.

On any given night in Los Angeles County, more than 22,300 women are homeless. When I was unhoused from 2020-2023, there were only eight women’s shelters in the county, none of which were near me. All of them were at capacity.

With an underfunded homeless services sector and a growing number of Californians being pushed into homelessness, rationing help for only those deemed most vulnerable has become standard practice. Without a child, mental illness or addiction issues, it’s difficult to qualify for needed assistance and services.

Everyone that’s unhoused needs help but not everyone that’s unhoused qualifies for help.

Unaccompanied women, an outdated term meaning women without dependent children, outnumber both unhoused veterans and unhoused youth combined, but lack specific programs or services geared to our needs — nor do we always have access to motel vouchers.

To say women are vulnerable when living on the streets is an understatement.

Based on my lived experience and concerns for the health, safety and welfare of all unhoused people, I advocate for housing as a constitutional human right and strongly support Assembly Constitutional Amendment 10, introduced by Assemblymember Matt Haney of San Francisco, the chair of the Legislative Renter’s Caucus. ACA 10 would amend our state Constitution to make housing a human right and guarantee access to adequate housing so every Californian can live in security, peace and dignity.

Like renters, unhoused people have been reduced to a commodity. Being homeless to me — not having a place to call home — meant not having a place in society. I didn’t feel like a citizen. Federal and state governments seemed like a third-world dictatorship rather than a representative democracy.

The unhoused are disenfranchised, marginalized and increasingly criminalized. As an unaccompanied woman, I felt like I was disposable. My basic human and civil rights were trampled, and I witnessed the same happen to other unhoused people, both women and men. The abuse for many, including me, came from the government contractors paid to assist the unhoused, who have no accountability to their clients.

When we make housing a constitutional right, we obligate state and local governments to amend and create policies that would protect, respect and fulfill that right. It would lead to greater investment in policies and funding to create and maintain housing that people can afford.

In a practical sense, it should mean that when people experience an emergency — like job loss, domestic violence, a financial or health crisis — there are more affordable housing options available for people to move into, rather than becoming unhoused and falling into a system that creates unsafe and unhealthy shelters for a limited few.

With more people becoming unhoused each day than are being housed, making housing a human right is an absolute necessity for California. It is imperative that we build the housing we need, expand homeless prevention, assist people when they are first displaced, and stop waiting until people are chronically homeless to help. We must insist that all levels of government work together to update our social safety net and that the state hold government contractors accountable by installing a legitimate grievance and fair hearing process for the unhoused.

I believe that all of us deserve a stable and decent place to call home. We need to move beyond rationing permanent housing, interim housing and services for unhoused people. Declaring housing as a constitutional and human right is an essential step in that direction.

The situation is too dire for anything less.

Kim Reeder serves on the community advisory board for the Urban Institute’s Housing Justice project. Reeder wrote this column for CalMatters.