Opinion: Affordable housing is in a state of emergency. Let’s act accordingly.

Rebecca Louie is the president/CEO of Wakeland Housing and Development Corp. and the board chair of the San Diego Housing Federation. She lives in Encinitas.

In 2002, the San Diego City Council gathered together at Golden Hall to adopt a resolution declaring a “State of Emergency Due to the Severe Shortage of Affordable Housing in the City.”

I was working at SANDAG at the time and remember being so excited that this was happening. We’d been trying to sound the alarm on the impending housing crisis since the mid-’90s. It was clear even then that we weren’t building anywhere near enough housing to keep up with our job growth, especially housing that our lower income (but vital) workforce could afford. And we were starting to see the effects already — rents and housing prices were starting to increase rapidly along with overcrowding and overpayment.