I read an article recently about the rising rent in L.A, and how its creating more and more homeless people as the wages are not increasing enough to balance it out. In recent years, as the economy has improved, corporate owners of rental properties have begun renovating a lot of their properties, driving up the rental prices. From 2010 to 2018, the median rental price for a one-bedroom apartment increased 84 percent, while median wages only rose 11 percent.

An interesting stat was brought up in the article, in which they stated four out of every 10 Americans cannot afford a $400 emergency. That’s almost half! In L.A county, that comes out to four million people. There was a woman mentioned in the article, Ana Estrada, who was previously employed as a social services case worker. Estrada’s rent increased from $1,000 to $3,000 per month, forcing her to relocate. The cheapest place she could find was $1,800, but then she suffered complications from a medical condition and ended up losing her job, and now her teenage daughter and her are living in their car.

Since 2001, 20,000 rent-controlled properties have been taken off the market. according to HUD, the Los Angeles metropolitan area needs more than a half a million affordable housing units to meet demand. Because of these factors, Estrada says that falling into homelessness is easier than people think.