‘All hands on deck’: Can public-private solutions solve Calif. housing crisis?

In his inaugural address last month, California Gov. Gavin Newsom vowed to create “a Marshall Plan” to alleviate the state’s housing shortage. If the analogy sounded fanciful, he soon backed up his rhetoric, inserting $1.75 billion for affordable housing production into his state budget proposal. His actions heartened housing advocates frustrated by what they considered his predecessor’s inertia.

“We have to move past Jerry Brown, whose approach was, ‘The housing problem is too hard, let’s leave it to God,’ ” Matt Schwartz says.

The president of the California Housing Partnership Corporation, a nonprofit based in San Francisco that assists public and private efforts to expand low-income housing, he calls Governor Newsom’s attention to the issue “a welcome change.” Then he adds a sobering caveat about that Marshall Plan idea as Newsom attempts to fulfill