A slew of formidable housing laws has emerged lately in states as different as Maine, Utah and Washington. Lots of the proposals goal to loosen zoning restrictions with the aim of addressing housing shortages. Maybe not surprisingly, California is talked about in most of the ensuing conversations and debates, and never in a constructive mild.
Policymakers and advocates elsewhere have invoked the Golden State as a warning: We should move pro-housing insurance policies to keep away from ending up like California. One suppose tank in Montana went as far as to advocate repealing “California-style zoning” to make starter properties extra possible.
On the identical time, nonetheless, California has turn into a nationwide mannequin amongst most of the identical housing advocates for its current efforts to repair previous errors. Since 2016, state legislators have handed greater than 100 housing-related legal guidelines with the intent of encouraging the development of extra reasonably priced and market-rate properties. These legal guidelines have essentially modified the panorama of housing guidelines and laws all through the state and helped encourage related reforms in different places.
A brand new legislation to permit accent dwelling models in Maine attracts on California’s instance, and pending laws in Oregon would create native housing targets just like California’s targets for areas and cities. However at the same time as advocates and lawmakers across the nation echo our reforms, a key query stays: Are California’s new legal guidelines really producing extra housing right here?
The quick reply is not any. Within the combination, regardless of the deluge of laws, annual constructing permits have remained stubbornly stagnant at simply over 100,000 properties yearly for the previous few years — properly beneath the 180,000 a yr state officers say we have to sustain with demand. In the meantime, homelessness has solely elevated statewide, and rents and residential costs stay at historic highs.
However these numbers don’t inform the entire story. And in reality, most of the lately handed legal guidelines have had a transparent, constructive impact.
Reforms to ease restrictions on accent dwelling models — so-called granny flats, yard cottages and different secondary dwellings — have led to a big enhance in any such housing. Simply six years in the past, such models made up an insignificant share of house constructing; immediately, they account for 1 in 5 constructing permits.
Equally, laws streamlining California’s notoriously prolonged approval processes has helped get extra housing constructed sooner, significantly reasonably priced and mixed-income developments. Enhancements to the state’s density bonus applications, which permit builders so as to add extra models to a venture if some are designated as beneath market fee, have additionally helped.
Different modifications are setting the desk for important new house development in (we hope) the close to future. Particularly, technical however important modifications to the arcane California legal guidelines and laws that govern native housing manufacturing, such because the Regional Housing Wants Allocation, the Housing Ingredient Legislation and the Housing Accountability Act, have pressured cities to plan for considerably extra housing in additional life like methods. These reforms have additionally taken away most of the instruments used to delay and block approval and development of housing.
Whereas not essentially headline-grabbing, all these modifications sign an necessary shift within the methods cities and counties do their half to plan for and actively encourage new house constructing — as evidenced by the Los Angeles Metropolis Council’s vote this week to zone for 135,000 extra models in Hollywood and downtown. And a few cities have embraced this shift, treating state-level necessities as a flooring, not a ceiling. San Diego, for instance, has expanded on baseline accent dwelling unit and density bonus necessities whereas empowering employees to embrace a tradition of “sure” on the subject of getting housing accepted.
California’s housing disaster ought to certainly function a cautionary story for different states, a warning to actively enhance provide earlier than it’s too late. Regardless of the current reforms, broader challenges nonetheless threaten to stymie California’s obvious progress, amongst them stubbornly excessive development prices and unsure financial situations.
However even when it takes a while to understand tangible outcomes, the necessary work of making a brand new housing paradigm in California shouldn’t be discounted. We’re lastly shifting in the appropriate path, and policymakers in different states can be taught from our successes in addition to our struggles.
David Garcia is the coverage director of UC Berkeley’s Terner Heart for Housing Innovation. Invoice Fulton is a Terner Heart fellow and a former San Diego planning director.
