California is facing a housing crisis but most people have dreamed of living in California. The first time in-depth study as intersectionality and Social Transformation, to provide at the crisis’ impact on women of color. The housing crisis for women of color is deeply connected to issues often ignored in this policy, together with housing, transit, and safety is the most promising approach to meeting the needs of women of color in California. Our policy recommendations, like the overwhelming support for the idea that transit-dense housing must also be quality child-care dense housing. Over the past 10 years, less than half of the number of new homes have been built as the state is needed. In California’s housing stock s is shifted in mainly two ways. While large multi-family unit stock remained relatively flat, the percentage of single-family units served as rental properties.

in California generally ignore how gender significantly shapes who could benefit from state-wide solutions. One primary reason for this myopia is the paucity of prior research that brings multiple literatures together. Our extensive review of the literature in economics, planning, sociology, and policy regarding California’s housing crisis revealed no research studies of women of color’s experiences with the crisis. To wit: the one article we found that used a majority female sample in Los Angeles did not center gender as part of its analysis. Yet according to the five-year estimates for 2012-2017 from the U.S. Census, there are about 11.9 million women and girls of color who live in California, which represents 30% of the state’s entire population. Excluding the experiences of women of color from discussions of the housing crisis risks serious misdiagnosis of the relevant factors and, quite logically, risks developing ineffective policy solutions.

In addition to the proximity of quality child care, calculations regarding safety are similarly paramount. There is a well-documented criminological literature that has found women’s assessments of threat shape the ways in which they use public transportation to move about their cities. Yet the connection between transit and gendered understandings of safety have not made it into the Housing + Transportation Index, nor into the conversation about California’s housing crisis. Yet a cursory glance at BART crime statistics through June of 2018 indicates that aggravated assault has increased every year for the past five years, including a 28% increase between 2017 and 2018.