Global Courant
Pam Quinn, a retired human resources director, was burned out by Silicon Valley’s labor-intensive culture and wanted to move to a place where she felt “like I was part of a community.”
After a search on her iPad, the 66-year-old widow from Campbell, a suburb of San Jose, found Twin Oaks, a newly built development in Hollister, described on her website as a “55+ active lifestyle community.” Quinn moved in April 2022, just as development was completed.
Hollister is the county seat of San Benito County, California’s leader in housing additions in recent years. Between July 2020 and July 2022, the housing supply in the province increased by 4.6% or 946 units.
San Benito County defied trends in California, where housing stock increased just 1.6% between July 2020 and July 2022, while the U.S. as a whole increased housing stock by 2.3%, according to newly released data from the United States Census Bureau.
Quinn’s friends in Silicon Valley used to tease her, saying, “Hollister, that’s the perks, you can’t live there,” she said, but her new home, away from the corporate grind and traffic, has changed her life.
“I live here in a five-star resort and it’s absolutely beautiful,” she said.
Amid California’s housing crisis, the state has made an effort to add enough offerings — like the Hollister development — to mitigate skyrocketing rents.
But many states in the US – 31 to be exact – reported more housing growth than California.
Land costs, environmental constraints and other factors may explain why California lags behind so many other states in building new housing, said Hans Johnson, a demographer with the Public Policy Institute of California.
“The availability and cost of land in California are different than many states where housing is being built at a faster rate,” he said.
“We have very high house prices,” Johnson said, and “while we may be losing people, there is still an unmet demand for more homes.”
There are fewer places to build in California after previous home prices led to “major new suburban developments on the outskirts of the city” — with places like Orange County and the Inland Empire fueling growth, Johnson said.
“We have limited land to build new homes in areas where demand is high,” he said, and as a result, “California has struggled to build as many homes as many of us believe is necessary.”
In addition, experts believe that regulations such as the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, may need to be reformed to “streamline housing construction in California,” Johnson said.
“Neighborhood opposition and lawsuits have dampened the ability of jurisdictions to build housing, even if they want to,” he said. “New housing projects can stall for years while the courts review the lawsuits.”
While California has been slow to add housing, some of the fastest growth has occurred in the kinds of places where fleeing Californians are known to move, including Utah, Idaho, and Texas.
In raw numbers, Florida and Texas added more units than California. Texas added nearly 550,000 units in the two-year period, while Florida added nearly 400,000. California’s 235,000 additional units are less than half of what Texas added in the same period.
Here are the top 15 states by housing growth, including many states popular with residents moving out of California:
Utah, 6.7%Idaho, 6.0%Texas, 4.7%South Carolina, 4.3%Florida, 4.0%Colorado, 4.0%North Carolina, 3.9%South Dakota, 3.8 %Delaware, 3.8%Tennessee, 3.7%Nevada, 3.7%Washington, 3.5 %Arizona, 3.4%Georgia, 2.9%Montana, 2.8%
Californians’ recent migration trends have sparked controversy in recent years: Utah’s governor told Californians to stay home “instead of coming as refugees.” Boise opposed rising migration in California, and residents of Los Angeles and San Francisco faced billboards telling them not to move to Texas.
Census data points to a trend toward weaker home growth in the Northeast and Midwest and stronger growth in the Southeast and Rockies.
The country’s recent housing trend appears to be in line with US politics.
The top five states for housing growth — and eight of the top 10 — voted Republican in the 2020 presidential election. Four of the bottom five voted Democrat, as did seven of the bottom 10.
Johnson pointed to his research, which found that “higher-income Californians who leave the state are more likely to move to a state with no income tax.” Many states with no income tax are red states, but Johnson acknowledged that it “isn’t always a red and blue issue.”
The main destination states for those leaving California are places like Washington, Nevada and Texas, he said, which tend to go from liberal to conservative.
Also researches by the California Institute of Public Policy show that “people who are conservative are significantly more likely to say they are likely to leave the state because of high house prices than people who are liberal,” Johnson said.
Here are the bottom five states by housing growth:
46. West Virginia, 0.7%
47. Connecticut, 0.7%
48.New Jersey, 0.6%
49.Rhode Island, 0.5%
50.Illinois, 0.5%
Of the nation’s cities that added housing the fastest, the Census Bureau said in a press release that “(n)ine of the nation’s 15 fastest-growing cities last year were in the South,” with six of those in Texas, the state with the third largest housing growth.
The release highlighted counties with exceptionally high growth: “Wasatch County, east of Provo, Utah, was the fastest-growing county,” with housing numbers rising 7.7% between July 2021 and July 2022, the report said. Other notable counties are Rockwall County, northeast of Dallas, Texas – 7.4% – and St. Johns County, south of Jacksonville, Florida, at 6.6%.
Back in Hollister, Quinn remembered the grumbling traffic in Silicon Valley and the hectic lifestyle of her neighbors.
“You’re out the door at 6 a.m., you crawl in at 7 p.m.,” she said. “That’s the reality of life in Silicon Valley right now.”
Now she is about 50 minutes from her children and grandchildren in the Bay Area – provided she drives in light traffic.
“The overall quality of life here” is better, she said, with lower stress levels than in suburban San Jose. “People are looking for that balance.”
