Solution to housing crisis? Great Micro info.

The Californians have a problem very similar to ours - rising population and severe restrictions on building, pushing up house prices to extremes. However, there is a proposed solution, and much of this could come into a housing essay. I am putting the article here, but there is also a Q&A with the bill proposer, which chucks in some tricky questions - here is the link.

The future of housing policy is being decided in California

A chat with the activist who first dreamed up SB 827, a sweeping new bill that addresses California’s housing crisis.

By David Roberts@drvox david@vox.com Updated Apr 4, 2018, 9:22am EDT

            

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California is in the midst of crippling housing crisis. The state’s population has steadily grown, but it hasn’t been building new places for people to live at anything close to the same rate. It now ranks 49th in housing units per capita.

The predictable consequence of demand growing faster than supply is that existing housing in the state, especially in its biggest cities, has become insanely expensive. Seven of the 10 most expensive US real estate markets are Californian. The median home price in the state is $524,000; in San Francisco it is approaching $1.3 million.

Rising prices push middle-class workers further and further from their jobs, leading to unhealthy commutes and traffic congestion. Low-income Californians are increasingly forced to choose between rent and food or health care, adding to the state’s hunger and health problems, or being pushed out of housing altogether, adding to its burgeoning homeless population. According to analysts at McKinsey, the housing crisis is costing California $140 billion a year in lost economic output.

State lawmakers are finally beginning to take the crisis seriously. Last year, Gov. Jerry Brown and the California legislature passed a slate of 15 housing bills, which would (among other things) raise almost $1 billion a year to subsidize affordable housing. More housing bills are slated for 2018. Meanwhile, the state transportation agency, CalTrans, is aiming to double transit ridership between 2015 and 2020, in part to encourage urban density.

A tangle of land-use restrictions makes it difficult to build homes in California

But those legislative reforms are fighting against an artificially constrained market. The basic problem remains: It is difficult to build housing in California, thanks in part to a thicket of local parking regulations, building requirements, zoning restrictions, and bureaucratic choke points. The state’s (generally whiter, wealthier) residents use these tools to prevent new construction that might house (generally more diverse, poorer) newcomers.

As long as supply is artificially constrained and demand continues growing, affordable housing subsidies will never be able to keep up. As long as localities can’t or won’t build dense housing near train stations and bus stops, transit investments won’t pay off like they could.

A graph from an excellent CalMatters explainer on the CA housing crisis.

CalMatters

Now, there is a solution on the table that goes directly after this root cause. SB 827, a new bill before the California Senate, would require that all areas within a half-mile of a high-frequency transit stop, or within a quarter-mile of a bus or transit corridor, allow heights of at least 45 or 85 feet (depending on distance from transit, width of street, and other characteristics). That’s roughly four to eight stories, far higher than what many local zoning commissions allow.

SB 827 would also waive any minimum parking requirements in those areas and prohibit any design requirement that would have the effect of arbitrarily lowering the square footage allowed on a lot.

The bill’s changes would apply to huge swathes of the state, including the majority of land in several major cities. It would unleash dense development In markets long dominated by powerful anti-housing activists (often called NIMBYs, for Not In My Backyard). It represents a housing revolution.

The bill was recently introduced by state Sen. Scott Wiener, along with co-authors Assembly member Phil Ting and Sen. Nancy Skinner. Unsurprisingly, it has drawn heated opposition from the aforementioned NIMBYs. 

What remains to be seen is how the state’s powerful low-income and social-justice community will come down on it. Recently, a coalition of such groups sent Wiener a letter opposing the bill, based on fears that development will displace low-income residents near transit, increasing housing stock but exacerbating inequality. At present, the bill contains no explicit measures to prevent such displacement. (Its sponsors say they are working on adding some.)

The housing advocate behind SB 827 is spoiling for a fight

To answer that and other questions about the bill, I called the guy who dreamed it up, Brian Hanlon. A longtime housing advocate, Hanlon helped start the California Renters Legal Advocacy and Education Fund, which provides legal advice to renters.

Last year, after some success helping write, push, and ultimately pass SB 167 (which strengthened California’s Housing Accountability Act), Hanlon started a new group of pro-housing advocates called California YIMBY (Yes In My Back Yard). Its mission is to back a suite of housing bills including SB 827, which he helped develop and sell to lawmakers.

Despite the sweeping effects of the bill, Hanlon says the reaction has been largely positive. Among other things, SB 827 is exposing a deep split in the state’s environmental community between those focused on climate change and urban density (generally younger) and those focused on old-school preservation and population limits (generally older). “These tensions have been simmering for a while,” Hanlon says, “but I think this is the bill that’s going to force people to pick a side.”

The bill will go through several committees in the California Senate and Assembly, likely picking up changes and amendments along the way. Its final fate will be clear by September or October.

My conversation with Hanlon has been edited for length and clarity.

Not very dense.

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