House Poor: How price hikes hurt the Bay Area’s most vulnerable

OAKLAND — Affording the meager apartment he shares above a pool hall on International Boulevard already was a scramble for Ricardo Lopez. But when the landlord announced last summer that she was nearly doubling the rent, the 60-year-old janitor began a soul-crushing journey: scouting out the squalid homeless encampments proliferating around the city, looking for one he could bear to live in.

He considered the jumble of makeshift shelters that spilled onto E. 12th Street, but people there were sleeping in trees and fighting. He walked through the maze of lean-tos next to Home Depot and the tents pitched at Union Point Park, but mounds of trash swarmed with flies. Just about everywhere, he found dead dogs and live rats.

“It’s really sad,” Lopez said, choking up. “I work to live and there’s nowhere to live.”

From Richmond to Redwood City, West Oakland to East San Jose, the Bay Area’s poorest neighborhoods have paid the highest price as costs exploded during the region’s housing shortage, forcing people like Lopez to make the most desperate of choices.

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