Soaring housing market pushing more people into homelessness
By Leo Stallworth
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ANTELOPE VALLEY, California (KABC) — Have you seen home prices lately in the Antelope Valley? The surging market is fueling a whole host of problems – including pushing more people into homelessness.
Adrienne Reca of Stephen B. Marvin Real Estate has been a broker for 32 years. She says this has been the craziest market she’s ever seen.
It’s one that she says she could have never predicted would happen as COVID became a part of our daily lives.
Reca has had her finger on the pulse of the Antelope Valley housing market for decades. She says right now, housing prices are at sky-high records. Interest rates have continued to remain low, so it’s really driven the buyers.
The Antelope Valley is looking a lot like Los Angeles with those struggling to make ends meet priced out of the AV housing market.
Reca says even rental home prices are very, very high and have equally skyrocketed.
Homeless advocate Jeremy Johnson of the Grace Resource Center also says housing prices in the Antelope Valley are skyrocketing just like the rest of the L.A. basin
“Families are being priced out of any sort of affording housing here,” he said.
Homeless advocates say that dilemma is coupled with the fact that demand far outpaces supply forcing more and more people to become homeless in the AV.
“It makes it hard for that single mom to get off the streets. It makes it hard for that veteran struggling with PTSD to get off the street. It makes it hard to get people into transitional housing,” he said.
He says the data on the rapid rise in homelessness in the AV shows it’s becoming a humanitarian crisis.
He adds that if we look at the data from 2019 to 2020, it grew 44%. Although a homeless count was not done in 2021, there’s no reason to believe that the trend of a 40 – 50% annual increase hasn’t continued.
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