A new report from the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley, demonstrates that property values in the State of California have increased markedly over the past two decades, while household incomes have not kept pace, profoundly impacting the Latinos living in the state, or nearly 40% of the population.

According to the report, while household incomes increased by about 23% between 2000 and 2019, average property values increased by about 180%, as reported by NBC News.

In San Joaquin County, where Latinos make up more than 40% of residents, in 2010 there was a significant drop in the value of home ownership and, as a result, 91% of properties were sold to middle-income families. Currently, the number of properties accessed by this segment has dropped to 58%, with similar trends in other municipalities, including Alameda, Santa Clara, and Riverside.

Terner Center policy director and report co-author David Garcia noted that, “These areas that used to be affordable to working-class families, middle-income households, are increasingly becoming out of reach [and] a lot of people don’t always realize is that these [people] are essential parts of our workforce. These are people who are gainfully employed and pay a percentage of their income towards their rent to stay in these residences”, while cutting spending in areas such as food and education.

“The reliance on high rent limits future chances of homeownership and wealth-building. About 39 percent of middle-income renters are spending more than 30 percent of their income on housing; 10 percent are severely cost-burdened”, according to the report.

Latinos separate a greater percentage of their income for higher rents compared to other groups of people. This becomes a major challenge, as it makes it difficult to save for the purchase of a home of your own, according to a report published by NBC.

In another recent report from the University of California, Los Angeles, researchers found that low-income Latinos and Asian families were among the demographic groups with the lowest rates of request for rent assistance. Latinos ranked second in both requests for rental assistance and assistance received.

According to the Terner Center, “In 2019, almost 40 percent of California households were burdened with rent or homeowner costs, according to the Terner Center report. A record 5.2 million households in the state face housing cost burdens. Renters experienced these burdens at substantially higher levels than homeowners — at 53.1 percent compared to 29.6 percent of owner households”.

"I don’t think there’s one silver bullet to solve this crisis. It’s going to take really a spectrum of policy tools to adequately address this, and it won’t happen overnight," Garcia said. "It took decades to get to this point, and it’s going to take several years, several legislative sessions to come up with the ideas and policies to take us out of this situation”, said David Garcia.