Crisis goes from bad to worse
This year’s counts of homeless populations across the Bay Area and California yielded a trove of distressing data on the depth and persistence of the housing shortage as well as the inadequacy of state and local officials’ response — to the extent that they have responded.
Unfortunately, there’s more: Reports on housing permits issued through the first half of this year show a pronounced statewide downturn in residential construction. At a time when California should be building homes at more than twice the current pace, the number of houses and apartments likely to be built is falling.
U.S. census surveys analyzed by the Public Policy Institute of California show a 16% yearoveryear decline in residential construction permits. From July 2018 through June, permits for 93,000 housing units were issued statewide, down from 110,000 units authorized over the previous 12 months. Even if each of those permits yielded a house or apartment, California would be producing housing at half the rate officials say is needed and a fifth of the goal set by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
While housing production across the region and state has been anemic for more than a decade, this is the first such sustained statewide decline in residential construction permits since the Great Recession ended in 2009.
Permits for apartment buildings and other multifamily residences, the key to closing the worst housing deficit on the U.S. mainland, suffered a steeper decline during the period, the PPIC noted, falling 24%.
In the Bay Area, San Mateo and Alameda counties saw the most precipitous drops in permitted homes over the past year, with respective declines from the previous 12 months of 49% and 30%. Permits in Santa Clara and Contra Costa counties fell 9% and 7%.
The region has encouraging exceptions. Permits in Sonoma County, buoyed by efforts to replace housing destroyed by the Wine Country fires, increased 47%. San Francisco saw an even greater jump of 66%. PPIC senior fellow Hans Johnson attributed that to longplanned development in the South of Market and Mission Bay neighborhoods, where there is less of the neighborhood opposition seen elsewhere in the city and suburbs. Last month, for instance, citing concerns about traffic and the size of a mixeduse project, a no vote by a San Bruno councilman killed 425 housing units planned near YouTube’s head