Housing shortage epidemic infects neighboring states

Sorry, Utah. California’s epidemic shortage of housing hasn’t just sickened our own state — driving up prices, forcing residents into rentals and putting a $140 billion annual drag on our economy. The disease is spreading to our neighbors, too. Today, nearly every major Western city — from Seattle to Denver to Boise — is experiencing a minor-league version of the California housing crisis.

This regional housing crisis shares some causes: lack of water sources, shortages of skilled construction workers, and the rising price of scarce land near job centers. But our Western neighbors face an additional challenge: the influx of Californians who are unable to find housing in their own state.

I witnessed the California epidemic’s spread recently in Utah, where the housing shortage is considered historic. For the first time since the 1970s, Utah, growing because of births and the arrival of job seekers, is adding more households than housing units. So homeownership rates are falling, homelessness is rising, and the Salt Lake City Council has declared an affordable housing emergency.

Facing these challenges, some Utahns are seeking to learn from California’s mistakes so their crisis doesn’t worsen. A recent assessment by the nonprofit Envision Utah found: “Faced with rapid growth, many California communities, and even the state, imposed ever-more-stringent regulations designed to curb development, believing that if they slowed development it would put the brakes on growth.”

But, said Envision Utah, “California’s constraints didn’t slow growth, so demand for housing stayed high. Instead, those regulations simply diminished the supply, and we know what happens next.”

By the same token, Utah holds lessons for California. Most intriguingly, Utah and California are distinguished by their lack of housing. California is ranked 49th in the country in the number of housing units per person. Utah is 50th. But Utah, for its housing struggles, hasn’t had a shortage as deep or long-lasting as ours, or prices that exceed the national average by 2½ times. Why?

One part of the answer might sound obvious: Utah doesn’t need as many housing units because it has the country’s largest families, a product of the prevalence of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. That suggests one wildly impractical solution to the housing crisis — California embracing Mormonism as its state religion. But it’s no more far-fetched than the 50-plus bills in our Legislature that offer minor or counterproductive changes to California’s housing markets.

Putting religion aside, the most serious difference between Utah and California housing involves local government. Utah is a place where state government defers to local government, and local communities retain control over their destiny. California is not.

It’s hard to exaggerate how little control California communities have over their fate. For 40 years, the state government has continued to concentrate its power at the expense of locals, discouraging housing in the process. Environmental regulations make it slow and costly to build housing. State limits on local taxes, especially Proposition 13, create incentives that encourage retail and commercial development, not housing.

This state of affairs fuels NIMBYism. With their representatives having relatively little power, local officials cling to the power they do have: saying no to change in their communities.

Utah, a straitlaced place, has almost none of California’s restrictions on growth and local control. It takes years, even decades, for brave developers to navigate California’s antihousing rules and build something. In Utah, housing comes together in a matter of months.

“We don’t have the problem you have with widespread antigrowth sentiment,” says economist Robert Spendlove, a member of the Utah Legislature.

That culture has made it easier for Utah to respond to its housing problems. There’s momentum to lift limits on housing density and streamline the permit process. Utah builders are also increasing production of more moderately priced homes.

In California, the response is very different. Gov. Jerry Brown and leading legislators want to impose even more rules on local governments, with the goal of forcing the construction of more housing. But local governments are already weary of state mandates. Might new housing ones only encourage more defiance and NIMBYism?

Of course, reforming California’s system of government to restore local control and eliminate antihousing incentives would be extremely difficult. But how easy is it to live under a miserable housing shortage that exports our people — and our housing challenges — to states like Utah?

Failing to address our housing crisis is bad for California. And it isn’t very neighborly.

Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Zócalo Public Square. To comment, submit your letter to the editor at www.sfchronicle.com/ letters.

California is ranked 49th in the number of housing units per person. Utah is 50th. But Utah hasn’t had a shortage as long-lasting as ours.