Housing and homelessness are union issues

By Fabrizio Sasso
Executive Director, Sacramento CLC

The two main crises we face in Sacramento—and all of California—right now are housing and homelessness.

These intertwined issues affect all of our unions and members in some way because we all need and deserve safe and fair housing, and it is increasingly hard to afford this basic necessity even for those with good union jobs.

Though housing prices have fallen a bit in our region, interest rates continue to climb. That means for many, especially first-time buyers, home ownership remains a distant dream.

Many of us are renters, and may be for some time to come. Whether it’s towards a mortgage or rent, many of us are paying an increasing percentage of our paychecks towards housing, and it’s scary. How much of our pay can we be expected to put towards housing?

But even as we fight for more affordable housing, the reality is that too many people have been pushed out to the streets because they can’t pay. Some of those people suffer from addictions or mental health issues, but too many are simply priced out of the housing market.

There is homelessness in our workplaces, often unseen because we assume those we work with are in stable conditions. But you would be shocked by how many people you know who are living in cars, bouncing from couch to couch or forced to camp on our corners. Sometimes, despite doing everything right, our paychecks just don’t go far enough to meet our basic needs.

That makes it all the more vital that we, as unions, fight to protect the right of renters to remain in the homes, and fight to ensure a stable and affordable stock of rental housing in our region.

Labor must have a unified response to these crises, and we at the Sacramento Central Labor Council are committed to making that happen. We have started the process to develop Labor’s Guiding Principles. This effort will help to develop a lens that will direct decisions made at the labor council on our unified response, through examining our shared values and our shared priorities.

Meetings began with a discussion about the “Union/Worker experience” related to these two issues, focusing on the varying impacts and problems these crises create for our members. We brought in experts to help inform us on the current state of the crises and what the causes are.

From that important meeting, we are now developing our guiding principles in a working group that includes public sector voices, private sector members and our Construction and Building Trades. There is so much common ground for us to begin our work because across all of these union members, these are crises that touch us all with equal urgency.

We are moving quickly to craft these principles and by the time you read this, we hope to have drafted our stance on homelessness. It will be presented at the June 20th delegates meeting for approval and I encourage all of you to come and learn more, and add your own voices to the discussion.

The work will continue with the formation of committees which will work to develop a plan that will allow Labor to take positions on policy and advocate for change within our communities and our local governments.

Labor has a unique voice in addressing these crises and we are pleased that our affiliates have stepped up in response.

Together, we can make change and build a stronger, safer future for our members and our communities.