Read on to learn what steps the County is taking to increase housing stability for more Latino residents.
Source: Santa Clara County Latino Health Assessment
On May 6th, the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors adopted the recommendations in the County’s first Latino Health Assessment in more than a decade. The Assessment includes information on education, employment, income, safe and stable housing, and access to quality health care because these factors impact a community’s health. It also links the current health status of the county’s Latino residents to historical, political, and economic forces. By making these connections, government entities and other organizations can take action to ensure that Latino residents have what they need to thrive.
The Assessment found that Santa Clara County’s Latino residents are more likely than average to experience cost burden, live in overcrowded conditions, and to experience homelessness, and less likely to report living in stable housing conditions. The Assessment found that Latino communities are also more vulnerable to displacement and gentrification: all census tracts but one undergoing advanced gentrification, and all census tracts experiencing early/ongoing gentrification, were located in East San José. The majority of the low-income census tracts vulnerable to population displacement were located in either the East San José or South County.
At the request of Vice President Arenas, the Board adopted the Assessment’s recommendations, as well as a range of additional recommendations grounded in the report and related data. These include:
- The development of a Latino Community Housing and Health Crises Brief to inform the Community Plan to End Homelessness update,
- Identification of strategies to address the disproportionate representation of Latino individuals in supportive housing systems,
- Exploration of anti-retaliation protections, including those related to immigration status, for inclusion in the Residential Tenant Protection Ordinance update, and
- A report to the Housing, Land Use, Environment, and Transportation Committee on housing and legislative strategies based on LHA data, including exploration of culturally responsive and creative affordable housing models,
- The development of a large-County coalition strategy to advocate for expanding Section 8 funding,
- Follow-up studies on the dangers of overcrowded housing and related harms, and Latino health initiatives in other large counties with substantial Latino populations for replicable programmatic solutions to identify disparities identified in the LHA report.
Alison Cingolani, SV@Home’s Director of Policy, attended the meeting to speak in support of the Assessment’s receipt, the adoption of Supervisor Arenas’ recommendations, and of new sources of revenue to meet the needs of lower-income Latino families and individuals:
Thank you for the Latino Health Assessment, which demonstrates clearly the impacts of structural racism on our communities. Housing is a critical social determinant of health, and the report shows that Latino residents are paying more than they can afford for housing, with nearly 70% experiencing cost burden, even when forced to live in hazardous, substandard conditions.
Alison Cingolani, SV@Home’s Director of Policy
Severely cost-burdened households are more likely to struggle to buy food, and to experience overcrowding, housing instability, poor health, educational setbacks, unemployment, and even eviction. And nearly half of unhoused people in the county are Latino- increasingly families with children.
For families who are not able to afford a market-rate home, living in affordable housing means they have financial resources available after paying rent to afford the things they need to thrive.
We urge the Board to adopt the report and Supervisor Arenas’ recommendations, and explore options for new sources of affordable housing revenue to alleviate pressure on the health and wellbeing of the County’s Latino communities.