Unfair advantage

California’s homeownership rates are the lowest they’ve been since the 1940s, but that’s not stopping homeowners from getting enormous subsidies from the state.

According to a new study, the state will spend $929 per homeowner household in fiscal year 2018-19. As for renters? They’ll receive just $71 in expenditures from the state.

“It speaks to the state’s historic investment in homeowners over renters as far as tax expenditures go,” said Danielle Mazzella, a housing data analyst at the California Housing Partnership Corp., which performed the study.

The inequities are the result of many different factors. Homeowners can take advantage of a variety of state subsidies including the state’s deductions for mortgage interest and property taxes. These deductions, which can be thousands of dollars for homeowners, leave California’s annual $60-$120 renter’s credit in the dust.

Meanwhile, renters have suffered from the loss of California’s redevelopment agencies, which created low-income housing units across the state. In anticipation of the federal tax cuts, production of a certain kind of low-income housing dependent on tax credits has declined 45 percent in the state.

Decades of regressive local housing policy has resulted in a dire shortage of affordable rental units — California is short by 1.5 million affordable rental homes just to meet current demand.

California needs to shift this inequitable balance.

The state must shove balky local governments to ramp up housing production, via bills like SB827 from state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco. It must increase its own investment in affordable housing. The answers aren’t new — but they’re growing more important every year.