A couple months ago, California legislators shut down an attempt to make housing more affordable in the state. Now they’re moving forward with an alternative measure, but there’s a major problem — it probably won’t do anything.
California suffers from a severe shortage of affordable housing. The state ranks 49th in the nation in housing density, a measure of housing units per person. That lack of supply has real consequences — according to Zillow, the median home price in California is more than double the national average. Renters have suffered too, as at least 30 percent of residents in every single metropolitan area (comprising 98 percent of the state population) cannot afford local rents. That number is closer to 60 percent in some areas.
That situation isn’t sustainable, but each reform effort has met with significant opposition. The most high-profile of these reform efforts came when State Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, proposed SB 827, which would have required meaningful upzoning near transit hubs.
SB 827 would have alleviated two statewide issues at once by making housing more affordable and reducing traffic congestion by encouraging the use of public transit. But a coalition of progressives who feared gentrification and developer profits, conservatives who disliked state pre-emption of local zoning policy, and “NIMBYs” concerned with “neighborhood character” brought down the legislation.
Wiener also proposed a companion piece of legislation, SB 828. SB 828 would require localities to zone for 125 percent of housing needs, as opposed to the current 100 percent. If that seems excessive, consider that states currently come nowhere near meeting that 100 percent requirement — just two of 529 cities and counties met housing goals at all four income quadrants between 2007 and 2014. SB 828 would also increase state audits and enforcement of local efforts to meet these goals.
Unable to marshal the kind of grassroots effort against the more complex SB 828, opponents of new housing have embraced a more traditional tactic to killing legislation: amending it until it becomes toothless. Originally localities would have been required to zone for 200 percent of housing needs, but now the requirement is down to 125 percent. Auditing mechanisms have been weakened. Neither will housing goals be cumulative, meaning that if localities ignore their housing targets then the shortfall will not be added to future goals.
The most significant amendment, however, is a change of just a single word. While the original legislation stated that “reasonable actions shall be taken by local and regional governments” to meet housing targets, the amended version reads that “reasonable actions should be taken.” This gives localities an out to say that they are free to ignore SB 828’s “suggestions.”
SB 828 has passed the Senate, but in its watered-down form it is doubtful it will make a real impact on California’s housing crisis. The traditional progressive remedies (rent controls, public housing, and homelessness spending) simply aren’t doing the job. If California is serious about addressing its housing crisis, the state needs to cut to the heart of the problem and significantly ramp up housing construction.
Andrew Wilford (@PolicyWilford) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is an associate policy analyst at the National Taxpayers Union.
