Opinion: We Don't Have a Housing Crisis - We Have an Affordability and Homelessness Crisis

We do not have a housing crisis in California. We have an **affordability crisis** — and Democrats, including my opponent Ted Lieu, bear much of the responsibility. Through decades of anti-business policies, overregulation, and punitive taxation, they have chased away the industries that once formed the backbone of our economy. Millions of people have left the state — and they didn’t take their houses with them. The result is a housing glut in many areas, yet prices and rents remain artificially high due to market distortions and failed progressive policies.

Meanwhile, the County of Los Angeles has owned **over 13,000 unused properties** for decades — long before COVID and remote work ever existed. The vast majority of new apartments built under the Builder’s Remedy sit empty. This is not a shortage of units. It is a crisis of drug-addicted homeless people committing crimes on our streets, in our neighborhoods, and in our communities.

My solution is practical and targeted. I will repurpose these empty, County-owned office buildings into **halfway house beds** — not market-rate apartments. Converting offices into full apartments would require expensive new plumbing and major renovations. Turning them into supervised halfway house bedrooms is simple: just furniture and basic setup. These buildings already have security infrastructure, making them ideal for transitional housing.

**Step one:** Acknowledge reality. More than 50% of the chronically homeless population consists of former prison inmates. We also must do far more for our foster youth so they do not age out of the system and fall into the street-to-prison pipeline. These are the people who most need stable, supervised beds and support services.

At the same time, we must restore accountability to development. I will work to deploy FEMA, the EPA, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the Department of Transportation to stop Builder’s Remedy projects that violate environmental, safety, and regulatory standards. Responsible oversight protects our neighborhoods from reckless development.

Opinion: Solving the Westside Housing Crisis with Common Sense and Speed

For families still rebuilding after the devastating wildfires in Pacific Palisades, Malibu, and Altadena, we need speed, not more bureaucracy. I will fight for additional resources to these same agencies to fast-track approvals and reconstruction so fire victims can return to safe, permanent homes as quickly as possible.

This is a results-driven approach: repurpose the County’s 13,000+ empty properties into halfway house beds for those actually living on the streets, enforce real standards on new development, and cut red tape for wildfire recovery. Californians are exhausted by policies that deny basic facts and perpetuate failure.

As your next Member of Congress, I will confront the affordability crisis, restore economic sanity, and deliver targeted solutions that actually address addiction, crime, and homelessness on the Westside.

It’s time to stop the spin and start fixing what’s broken.