The uphill battle to build housing
The latest data on California building permits will sadly fail to surprise students of the state’s anemic housing production and quasipermanent shortage of homes. Housing permits for February were down 7% from last year’s underwhelming performance, according to the figures released Wednesday, and off 3% from 2020 for the year so far. Apartment construction, the key to easing the housing crisis, was particularly discouraging — worse than a typically slow February, worse than a year ago, and worse than the woefully insufficient average of the past five years.
Such figures constitute a continuing indictment of California housing policy, but a few lawmakers are still fighting the inertia. New legislation by Assembly Member David Chiu, DSan Francisco, would take another shot at cajoling housingaverse cities into meeting the state’s meticulously formulated but broadly ignored housing goals by tying some funding to their progress.
Chiu’s bill would require the state to evaluate cities’ success in meeting their housing goals halfway through every
eightyear cycle and encourage those falling behind their regions to change zoning and other policies to spur more construction. Those that don’t keep up would be denied a “prohousing” designation and therefore preference for certain state housing and transportation grants. The designation is part of a system of incentives and penalties that Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature devised to promote housing production as part of the 201920 state budget.
The Bay Area’s housing goals were more than doubled under a 2018 law by state Sen. Scott Wiener, DSan Francisco. That helped lead Berkeley, South San Francisco and a few other cities to take steps to undo singlefamily zoning and other policies that stifle residential construction. But most of the region’s local governments have tended to resist the state goals, and the Legislature has hesitated to make them compulsory.
The state Senate is also considering bills to facilitate multifamily housing construction. Like Chiu’s legislation, they reflect a more incremental approach to encouraging housing production after last year’s failure of Wiener’s more sweeping effort to legalize denser development near public transit and job centers.
If that record of inaction persists, we can count on more discouraging data
on not just the number of homes being built but also the disproportionate share of Californians who don’t have one.