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That the Bay Area and the nation are in the midst of a housing crisis is undeniable. Pre-coronavirus, the National Alliance to End Homelessness reported that more than a half million people were without shelter on any given night. Public officials seem to be at a loss to help the many thousands now sleeping in our parks and city streets.

This was not always the case. In his “Second Bill of Rights” speech in 1944, President Franklin Roosevelt articulated that every citizen has the right to employment, education, housing and medical care. These values took a hard right turn with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. His trickle-down, tax cuts for the rich philosophy has colored policy since that time, no matter if there was a Republican or Democrat in the White House.

Real estate investors recognize the Bay Area as a target of opportunity by erecting profitable market rate housing, in turn displacing residents who cannot afford ever higher rents and mortgages. Proposals to deal with the homeless are at best very temporary and inadequate measures like crowded shelters, a few tent cities, or a handful of tiny houses, or at worst coercive measures to break up and displace encampments.

However, the problem of housing is not insolvable. Just as the management of the coronavirus crisis should not be handled by politicians and corporations, but rather public health scientists and physicians, likewise the housing crisis should be managed by those with public housing expertise and sound, well-funded public policy. 

Very few recognize the names of Catherine Bauer, Garrett Eckbo, Vernon DeMars or Burton Cairns – all were builders and advocates of affordable public housing, all connected with UC Berkeley. Collectively they were referred to as “housers” – a term that since World War II is not part of our vocabulary and seemingly beyond our ability to even conceive. They were committed to raising the quality of urban life through improving availability of shelter for low-income families. 

Catherine Bauer’s major written work was Modern Housing, which was based on research done in Europe on post-World War I government supported housing projects. As an activist she worked on establishing public housing legislation during the New Deal and was involved with regional planning. She advocated for racially integrated housing. 

Garrett Eckbo worked for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) during the New Deal to design housing for migrant agricultural workers. Post-war, he was involved in designing an integrated cooperative housing project in Palo Alto that eventually was scuttled because the co-op refused to have restrictive racial covenants. 

Vernon DeMars worked with Garrett Eckbo on FSA projects that housed migrant agricultural workers, wartime housing projects for defense workers, and after the war on public housing in Richmond. He collaborated with Burton Cairns whose life ended prematurely in an automobile crash. 

Today building more market rate housing is touted as the solution for the housing crisis, yet it comes with little real support for affordable housing. The YIMBY “movement” has become the visible voice of Reaganomics in housing. These advocates of building anywhere and everywhere are lavishly funded by the same for-profit developers and landlords that fight rent control.  

Bauer stated back in 1940, “In actual practice, there is very little direct relation between the supply of dwelling available for the upper-income groups and those available at low rents. An all too frequent real estate phenomenon is so-called ‘overbuilding’ at the top (i.e., a large number of vacancies in the high-priced class) side by side in the same community with a severe quantitative shortage, few or no vacancies and extreme doubling up, at the bottom.” Sound familiar? 

UCB’s recent symbolic gesture of renaming Wurster Hall as Bauer Wurster Hall is welcome but a poor substitute for embracing the policies that Bauer championed. 

UC Berkeley, with support from Berkeley’s mayor and a few council members, plans to build housing on People’s Park, which will destroy irreplaceable open space – a bad idea made worse by the increase in urban-wildland fires and the ever present danger of earthquakes. Eliminating a natural sanctuary in an extremely crowded neighborhood is regretfully shortsighted, as is the destruction of a historical and cultural legacy. UC Berkeley also plans to destroy three historic buildings, including a rent-controlled apartment building, on another development site. These projects directly contradict the enlightened ideas of its past “houser” faculty members. 

Clearly cities can only work around the fringe of the homeless problem; they cannot solve it because it is a regional and national issue, which calls for redistributive policies from state and national government based on progressive taxation. The super-wealthy and mega-corporations need to pay those taxes. 

A hard left turn in public policy, recognizing housing is tied to the other rights FDR articulated, is unquestionably needed. Eliminating homelessness will only come with equity for all in employment, health care, education and housing. Intelligent leadership at the top coupled with sustained community activism can turn around the social disruption that plagues our country.