California Latinos Call on Local, National Leaders to Address Housing, Economy

Maria Vargas sells sliced jicama, cucumbers, and watermelon, among other fruits, from a sidewalk stand in San Francisco’s Mission District.

The El Salvadoran immigrant has two children and is expecting a third. After losing her previous job, she said she had no other choice but to find some way to support them.

“Everything is more expensive,” Vargas said in Spanish. “Food and rent are increasing by a lot.”

These kinds of increasing household costs are top of mind for many Latinos in San Francisco and across the country, and are becoming a key campaign issue in this election year. While Latino voters have historically supported Democrats, Latino voter organizations say these concerns — and in particular, skyrocketing rents — are propelling some to shift their political alliances.

That should worry presidential candidates, along with politicians competing for seats in congressional battleground states, though experts say there isn’t much evidence that trend has taken root yet in California. The Pew Research Center found that among adults in the state, approximately 50% of Latinos lean Democratic, 21% lean Republican and 29% expressed no party preference.

Mike Madrid, a partner at the public relations firm Grassroots Lab, said Democrats’ concern with cultural issues is missing the core political issue for many Latinos: the economy.

“It’s really no longer the party of the working class, and it shows in its policy and its priorities,” he said. “The working class is starting to revolt. They’re starting to say, ‘Enough.’”

He added that for the past 30 years, Latinos have always focused on growth in the economy, but the current climate is different.

“It was always about what opportunities lay before me, for my family, for my children, those were the primary economic concerns,” he said. “Today, it’s basic survival. It’s affordability and the inability to support a family in any reasonable way, with paying rents and trying to buy a home.”

According to a 2023 survey (PDF) from Florida International University and marketing firm Adsmovil, 1 in 5 Latino voters nationally have considered changing their political affiliation to another party or registering as independents. A majority of those voters — 61% — said that they would be open to leaving the Democratic Party, with a plurality of those — 38% — becoming Republicans.

It’s an important group for either party to woo: According to the Pew Research Center, Latinos are projected to account for nearly 15% of all eligible voters in November 2024, a new high.

A national poll conducted last year (PDF) from the Latino civil rights organization, UnidosUS, and Mi Familia Vota shows that Latinos ranked inflation and the rising cost of living, jobs and the economy, and health care as the three most important issues they would like to see addressed by Congress.

Of those surveyed, 47% of Latino voters approved of President Joe Biden’s job performance, with nearly as many — 44% — disapproving. But, despite that, many were willing to stick with Democrats, as 39% of respondents said Democrats would be better able to address inflation and the rising cost of living, while only 21% said Republicans would be more effective.

“People want solutions that they’re going to feel in their pocketbook in the near-term,” said Laura Arce, senior vice president of economic initiatives at UnidosUS. “Not just … promises of policies in the future, but how will I be able to afford my mortgage or my rent?”

On Tuesday, President Joe Biden announced a plan to withhold some federal tax breaks for large landlords if they raise rents by more than 5% per year. And former President Donald Trump, who’s made combating rising inflation a central tenet of his campaign, focused his housing plan on cutting energy costs and interest rates to increase housing construction.

As November rolls around, Arce is glad that housing has garnered mainstream attention and “entered the political debate” in a way she hasn’t seen before.

“I think there is growing recognition by our elected officials and our candidates that a lot of the angst around our economic situation is centered around housing, and something needs to happen,” she said.

Arce pointed to past policies of exclusion and discrimination (PDF) that have led to historically lower homeownership rates among Latinos, adding that because of these policies, Latino homebuyers are at a disadvantage when it comes to purchasing a home. They are less likely to be able to rely on generational wealth, she said, and also less likely to be able to rely on “generational knowledge.”

Compared to white households, Latino households’ median income is 45% lower, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. And, nearly 60% of Latinos pay more than a third of their income on housing. In 2022, 51% of Latinos were homeowners, compared to 72% of white residents.

“For a lot of Latino first-time homebuyers, they are also first-generation homebuyers, and so they don’t have the family wealth to lean on to help with a down payment,” Arce said. “They also may not have that expertise within the family of someone they can ask for advice about how to determine what’s a good mortgage product for me [and] what should I be looking for in a house.”

In San Francisco — as well as in much of the Bay Area — rising rents make it even harder for Latino residents to save for a down payment, said Julio Vidal, owner of Ceviche 19, a Peruvian restaurant in the Mission District.

“Affordable housing is out of reach for Latinos because rent costs are too high,” Vidal said in Spanish.

Nor does it help, said Blanca Trujillo, a Mexican-American woman living in San Francisco’s Mission District, that many Bay Area Latinos have to sometimes work two or three jobs to be able to afford stable housing.

“If a family has stable housing, it helps with safety and with mental health,” Trujillo said in Spanish.

The message for both Democrats and Republicans nationally, Trujillo said, is simple: “This is a basic need for any family. They should focus more on building more housing in neighborhoods. As politicians, they know what our neighborhoods and families need.”

In San Francisco, Madrid said the question is whether local leaders want a society with “de facto segregation” when it comes to housing.

“Unless San Francisco wants to lose its image as sort of a diverse, multiethnic, multiracial community,” he said, “it’s going to have to address housing for this community as a central part of its governance strategy.”