Global Courant 2023-05-05 15:30:55
A slew of ambitious housing legislation has recently been passed in states as diverse as Maine, Utah, and Washington. Many of the proposals are aimed at easing zoning restrictions with the aim of tackling the housing shortage. Perhaps unsurprisingly, California is mentioned in many of the resulting conversations and debatesand not in a positive light.
Policymakers and advocates elsewhere have invoked the Golden State as a warning: We must pass housing policies to avoid ending up like California. A think tank in Montana went so far as to advocate repeal of “California style zoning” to make starter homes more viable.
At the same time, however, California has become a national model among many of the same housing advocates because of its recent efforts to correct past mistakes. Since 2016, state legislatures have passed more than 100 housing-related laws with the aim of encouraging the construction of more affordable and competitive housing. These laws have fundamentally changed the landscape of housing rules and regulations across the state and helped drive similar reforms in other places.
A new law to allow ancillary housing in Maine is based on the California example, and pending legislation in Oregon would create local housing targets similar to California’s regional and city targets. But even as advocates and lawmakers across the country endorse our reforms, an important question remains: Will California’s new laws actually produce more housing here?
The short answer is no. Overall, despite the deluge of legislation, annual building permits have stubbornly stagnated at just over 100,000 homes a year in recent years — well below 180,000 a year, government officials say we need to keep up with demand. In the meantime, homelessness has only increased statewide, and rents and home prices remain at historic highs.
But those numbers don’t tell the whole story. And in fact, many of the recently passed laws have had a clear, positive effect.
Reforms to relax restrictions on co-housing – so-called granny flats, backyard cottages and other secondary housing – have led to a significant increase in this type of housing. Just six years ago, such units were an insignificant part of housing; today they account for 1 in 5 building permits.
Similarly, legislation streamlining California’s notoriously lengthy approval processes has helped build more housing faster, especially affordable and mixed-income developments. Improvements to the state’s density bonus programs, which allow developers to add more units to a project if some are classified as below market price, have also helped.
Other changes set the table for major new residential construction in (we hope) the near future. Particularly technical but crucial changes to California’s arcane laws and regulations governing local housing, such as the Regional allocation of housing needsthe Housing element Law and the Housing Accountability Act, have forced cities to plan significantly more housing in more realistic ways. These reforms have also removed many of the tools used to delay and block housing approval and construction.
While they don’t necessarily make headlines, all of these changes signal a major shift in how cities and counties are doing their part to plan for and actively encourage new housing development – as reflected in Los Angeles City Council’s vote this week to place an additional 135,000 units in the zone in Hollywood and downtown. And some cities have embraced this shift, treating state-level requirements as a floor, not a ceiling. San Diego, for example, has expanded basic housing unit requirements and density bonuses while empowering staff to embrace a culture of “yes” when it comes to getting housing approval.
Indeed, California’s housing crisis should serve as a cautionary tale to other states, a warning to actively increase supply before it’s too late. Despite recent reforms, broader challenges still threaten to hinder California’s apparent progress, including stubbornly high construction costs and uncertain economic conditions.
But even if it takes some time to realize tangible results, the important work of creating a new housing paradigm in California should not be neglected. We are finally moving in the right direction, and policymakers in other states can learn from both our successes and our struggles.
David Garcia is the policy director of the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley. Bill Fulton is a Terner Center fellow and former San Diego planning director.
