California can’t be a haven for others until it builds more housing for everyone

For refugees from Afghanistan and Ukraine.

For trans folks looking for care that is perhaps banned the place they dwell.

That compassion is fantastic to listen to, the continuation of how California has lengthy been a welcoming refuge for the oppressed, the outcast and the ostracized. For many years, we’ve opened our hearts to everybody from refugees from war-torn Central America to LGBTQ individuals who really feel shunned of their hometowns. California has lengthy been a spot to forge a brand new begin.

However making that want a actuality has turn out to be even more durable. California’s coronary heart is writing checks that its housing component can’t money. It’s exhausting to be a haven when it’s so rattling costly to dwell right here.

How can a spot be a haven when gasoline averages $5.71 a gallon, greater than $1.50 greater than the remainder of the nation? How can we invite folks right here of their darkest hour when the common statewide residence worth is $774,899 — roughly twice the nationwide mark? Each day life is much more costly within the Bay Space. A Chronicle evaluation of the buyer worth index knowledge exhibits {that a} Bay Space resident will spend $4,400 extra per 12 months on groceries, transportation and well being care than two years in the past.

With costs like that, is it irresponsible for California to pitch itself as a haven?

“I can’t say that the message is incorrect. Nothing incorrect with the message. It’s simply not significant,” stated Darrell Owens, an information analyst with California YIMBY, a nonprofit that advocates for constructing a wide range of housing. He has researched California’s means to be a haven for worldwide refugees.

Owens in contrast it to seeing “Black Lives Matter” and “Refugees Welcome” indicators “in extraordinarily costly and inexpensive neighborhoods. Everybody is aware of that it’s simply extra of an announcement about their very own values than it’s concerning the actuality on the bottom.”

Owens, a fourth-generation Bay Space resident, advised me that “if somebody is telling you that it is a good spot to dwell, they’re not mendacity. In the event that they’re telling you that you’ll have higher protections right here than different states, they’re not mendacity. However most working-class households aren’t going to make the monumental sacrifice and dwell in overcrowded circumstances for terribly costly housing that’s in little or no provide simply to allow them to be protected against the regulation.”

It’s a powerful actuality to listen to.

Making it more durable is that so many individuals’s wants are exponentially growing — partly due to the pandemic, and partly due to politics.

Final week, the governor of Oklahoma signed a regulation that makes abortion a felony punishable by as much as 10 years in jail and a $100,000 wonderful “besides to save lots of the lifetime of a pregnant lady in a medical emergency.”

That, mixed with the chance that the Supreme Courtroom will intestine the landmark Roe vs. Wade abortion ruling within the subsequent few months, is predicted to ship hundreds of individuals to California and different states in the hunt for care.

Gov. Gavin Newsom stated he needs California to be a “sanctuary” for these folks. Mini Timmaraju, the president of NARAL Professional-Alternative America, advised me final week that she’s thrilled California has created a Way forward for Abortion Council that’s getting ready for the tens of hundreds of girls anticipated to hunt care within the state if Roe falls. The Legislature is contemplating a dozen items of laws proposed by the council designed to maintain these folks.

However Timmaraju, who graduated from UC Berkeley, stated “you’ll be able to’t actually be a haven if you happen to can’t create an equitable atmosphere for folks to have an opportunity to dwell and lift their household. Reproductive rights and reproductive freedom means extra than simply entry to abortion. It means the suitable to lift your youngsters in a group the place you’ll be able to breathe clear air, the place you’ll be able to afford good housing, the place you’ve nice public colleges.”

“It’s the entire greater image about what you get to do if you plan a household,” she stated on my “It’s All Political on Fifth and Mission” podcast. “And if each Californian doesn’t have that, no, it’s probably not a haven.”

Timmaraju stated, nonetheless, that what she loves about Californians and their leaders “is that they hold making an attempt to make it higher they usually’re having the powerful conversations And as someone who grew up in my residence state of Texas and hasn’t had the advantage of that in a really very long time, it offers me hope.”

That’s as a result of Texas is the anti-California on the subject of being something apart from a tax haven.

Final week, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott despatched a bus filled with migrants from his state to Washington, D.C., as a set of human props to make some extent about unlawful immigration.

That’s the identical Abbott who signed a invoice final 12 months that made abortion unlawful after an embryonic heartbeat is detected — often round six weeks — and made no exceptions for rape, sexual abuse or incest. As my colleague Gabrielle Lurie and I reported final 12 months, the transfer despatched scores of individuals looking for care to close by Oklahoma … till final week, at the least.

However that’s not all Abbott has performed. Earlier this 12 months he ordered the state to analyze mother and father of transgender adolescents who obtain gender-affirming care. Texas’ lawyer basic stated mother and father who facilitate that form of care are committing a type of baby abuse.

In response, final month state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, proposed laws to take care of these households and make California a “refuge for LGBTQ folks.” Wiener’s invoice, which is predicted to be formally launched quickly, seeks to maintain households collectively by rejecting out-of-state courtroom judgments that search to take away transgender kids from their mother and father’ custody due to gender-affirming well being care.

The ripple impact from these kinds of out-of state legal guidelines is being felt by Lyric — a 3-decade-old San Francisco nonprofit that helps LGBTQ youth. As one of many largest organizations of its sort within the nation, it has been seeing a rise in requests for assist from younger folks dwelling outdoors town, from the Central Valley to Florida, residence of the brand new “Don’t Say Homosexual” regulation that bans classroom dialogue of sexual orientation or gender id matters from kindergarten to 3rd grade. And sure, Texas.

However being in a state that describes itself as a sanctuary comes with a value.

“We applaud (Wiener’s) laws — it’s wonderful when it comes to seeing California is a sanctuary,” stated Adam-Michael Royston, Lyric’s growth and communications director. “We’re beginning to get these calls, and what we don’t know is, ‘What are the sources?’ So if people are coming from Texas, Florida, Ohio, they usually’re coming to California, what’s duty there? They’re not from San Francisco. They’re not Californian. We’re going to help them, however how do we offer these providers?”

Royston stated the group wouldn’t flip anybody away. However the enhance in want — and the need to be a haven — has pressured the group to “have this dialog for the final six to 9 months.”

To Wiener, the chair of the state Senate’s Housing Committee, the reply to many of those questions comes again to his longtime advocacy for constructing extra housing.

But constructing extra housing is likely one of the few areas the place California hasn’t had a lot compassion for the previous half century. Too many individuals really feel they’ve secured their house within the haven, they usually don’t wish to share it.

“The progressive place is the YIMBY place” — which means “sure in my yard” to constructing housing of every kind, Wiener stated.

“We’ve got gotten to a degree in California,” Wiener stated, “the place we say we wish to welcome folks, however then our actions are pulling up the drawbridge as a result of ‘I don’t desire a duplex in my neighborhood.’ Or ‘I don’t need extra folks making an attempt to park on my road.’Or ‘I don’t need extra youngsters in my baby’s classroom.’

“We’re both a spot of sanctuary and refuge or we’re not,” Wiener stated. “We have to maintain our personal 40 million residents and likewise be a spot of refuge for folks in want. And the minute California stops being a spot of refuge and sanctuary for folks in want is the minute we cease being California.”

Joe Garofoli is The San Francisco Chronicle’s senior political author. E-mail: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @joegarofoli