The Committee for Social Justice is deeply disappointed in the way our community continues to treat our unhoused neighbors. The mean-spirited comments, public harassment, sweeping generalizations about people experiencing homelessness are not just disheartening — they are dangerous. They reflect a misunderstanding of the true roots of homelessness and contribute to a culture of blame, exclusion, and criminalization. And the threat of closing the FARO Center, a place where the unhoused receive vital services to change their lives around.
Homelessness is not a personal failure. It is a policy failure!
Decades of research affirm this. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, there is no U.S. state where a full-time minimum wage worker can afford a two-bedroom apartment at fair market rent — not to mention a deficit of over 7 million affordable housing units. Locally, housing costs have skyrocketed while wages remain stagnant, and affordable housing remains woefully insufficient. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) reports that for every 100 extremely low-income renter households, only 33 affordable and available rental homes exist nationwide.
Moreover, many people experiencing homelessness are fleeing domestic violence, aging out of foster care, or grappling with untreated trauma and systemic racism. These are not individual shortcomings — they are societal failures, perpetuated by decades of disinvestment in public health, mental health services, housing, and economic equity.
The narrative that people choose to be homeless or are simply unwilling to work ignores the facts. The truth is that our community, like many others, lacks the infrastructure and compassion to address the root causes of homelessness. When we respond with judgment rather than empathy, we fail not only those without homes, but ourselves.
We must shift our perspective. Instead of blaming the individual, we need to hold systems accountable and demand policies that expand affordable housing, invest in mental health care, raise wages, and prevent homelessness before it begins. Ending homelessness is possible — but only if we choose to see it as a shared responsibility.
Fifty-nine percent of people in the United States are one check away from becoming homeless.
And currently 771,480 are experiencing homelessness, with 187,000 in California — the highest in the nation.
These numbers are staggering, and this is happening in the wealthiest country in the world.
We urge this community to lead with compassion, educate ourselves, and support evidence-based solutions. Our unhoused neighbors deserve dignity, not disdain.
Gina Rodarte Quiroz is the outreach coordinator and a board member of the Committee For Social Justice.
