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Tyrone Buckley remembers what it was like growing up in Meadowview. He remembers his family being the one of the few homeowners on his street. He remembers a family that once lived across the street from him.
He remembers when they got evicted.
“So they went and lived on the river for a week,” before they could find a new place to live, Buckley said. “They called it a family fishing trip where they fished for striper. They called it a family campout.”
Buckley, 41, later came to know the true story of the family’s housing instability, just like he has come to know how a lack of affordable housing in any state or any community can carry with it dire social consequences. It is a knowledge that helped motivate him to become one of the state’s leading advocates and experts when it comes to housing and affordable housing.
As a grown-up, Buckley is now the policy director over land use and finance for Housing California, one of the state’s top affordable housing groups. On Thursday, June 14, Buckley will be speaking at the grand reopening of the Owendale Mutual Housing Community in Davis, one of 17 Mutual Housing California communities in Sacramento and Yolo counties. His topic: the $4 billion Veterans and Affordable Housing Act that will be on the statewide ballot in November to generate some critically-needed financing to begin to address a housing crisis that is raising rents, driving people from their homes, and leaving the state with a huge shortfall when it comes to providing its people – especially those on the lower-income end – with safe and stable places to live.
“It’s a high priority for us,” Buckley said of the housing bond. “We’ve even taken a light legislative year in order to focus on it.”
In his remarks, Buckley is going to discuss California’s failure to invest in affordable housing since statewide voters last got a chance to vote on a housing bond, which was in 2006, on a $2.9 billion measure, and which they approved. In the 12-year interim, the lack of new investment has been compounded by a stark disinvestment in new affordable housing that resulted from the elimination of redevelopment agencies and their increment financing mechanisms.
Now, with the Veterans and Affordable Housing Act, there is an opportunity to change the equation.
“This bond marks a turnaround in that unfortunate history,” Buckley said. “Voters in California now have an opportunity to approve a $4 billion investment in affordable housing and to get more developments like Owendale off the ground.”
Mutual Housing California had long planned for the Grand Re-Opening Celebration at the 45-home community at Owendale’s 3023 Albany Ave. location in Davis, where a $2.7 million rehab project added new roofs and landscaping and upgraded electrical and plumbing systems and improved the outdoor lighting. More recently, Mutual Housing, which strongly endorses the Veterans and Affordable Housing Act, invited representatives from Housing California to participate in the event to help promote the bond measure.
In speaking on behalf of his agency, Buckley will draw from a career that includes more than 13 years fighting for affordable housing.
He has been a lobbyist for Housing California since 2015. Before that, he worked on affordable housing issues for the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, the Sacramento Housing Alliance, and as executive director of Clean & Sober, a nonprofit spin-off of Loaves & Fishes that focused on finding housing for homeless drug addicts and alcoholics. He obtained his A.B. in political science from UC Davis, his MCRP from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, and his J.D. from UC Davis School of Law, King Hall. He also was a U.S. Housing and Urban Development Fellow in 2005.
Buckley’s real-life experience also has prepared him for his advocacy work.
It includes the feel of growing up in Meadowview, the largely impoverished south Sacramento neighborhood that most recently came to national attention with the fatal police shooting of Stephon Clark. It’s a case that has sparked in-depth discussions, of course, about the nation’s police practices – and also about Meadowview’s myriad socioeconomic problems, including the neighborhood’s unstable housing situation.
“As a person who grew up in that neighborhood, families were always being uprooted,” Buckley recalled. “Kids were always uprooted from their schools, moving all over south Sacramento. So, yeah, a lack of affordable housing definitely plays a role in the kinds of situations young people find themselves in our community where there is no stability.”
At Owendale, residents have flourished in a neighborhood where one of their most basic needs – affordable housing – has been met. The stability that follows has allowed them to focus on other aspects of their lives such as employment and job training, in a Mutual Housing environment that fosters personal growth, leadership, and community interaction.
Passage of the Veterans and Affordable Housing Act promises to give thousands more California families a chance to benefit from the same opportunities.
“Growing up in south Sacramento, the importance of stable housing made an impact on me,” Buckley said. “Even though our community was in crisis, we had such stability in our family because our housing was stable. That always made an impression on me.”