Full commentary available (to subscribers) at Sacramento Business Journal
California has a housing crisis, with a need to build 2.5 million homes by 2030, according to the state Department of Housing and Community Development, and a lack of progress toward addressing it as cities have consistently failed to meet the state’s goals.
California has averaged building just 100,000 housing units per year. At this rate, we would only hit one-third of the target. Worse, the housing that does get built mostly serves higher-income households. Only 16% of California’s construction is affordable for low-income households. At this pace, California wouldn’t meet even 15% of its target of 1 million affordable homes.
California has missed every HCD target, often by a large margin. Existing approaches clearly aren’t working, and this shortage will not fix itself.