California Construction News staff writer
California must build 3.5 million homes by 2025 to end the state’s housing shortage, a new report from California YIMBY concludes.
“This shortage has resulted in rising rents and prices, closed access to homeownership for many families, and forced many Californians to leave the state altogether,” the report states. “A significant body of research suggests that the shortage is the result of land-use regulations that make it difficult to build new housing.”
The California YIMBY education fund commissioned a study by MapCraft of relative housing underproduction rates across the state, estimating a “conversion rate” for each city and county that compares historical rates of housing permitting to potential market-feasible housing development opportunities, assuming no limitations due to zoning.
Key findings:
- Based on a recent point-in-time snapshot of market-feasible housing development opportunities, about 30 percent of the approximately eight million addressable parcels in California could, in the absence of regulatory barriers to new housing, accommodate additional market-feasible units.
- Many factors preclude this level of development—including labor availability, material supply chains, willing sellers, and zoning regulations.
- The analysis considered the housing development potential of less than one-tenth of the land area in California. State- and federally-owned properties were not considered.
- Conversion rates of housing development opportunities vary widely across California. Among cities, the lowest conversion rates were mainly found in suburbs across the Bay Area and Southern California—especially near the coast—which have enormous housing demand but issue few housing development permits.
- Among counties, the lowest conversion rates of housing development opportunities were found along the perimeter of the Bay Area and along the Central Coast. Both regions face enormous housing demand but have issued few housing development permits in recent years.
- Not all of California is underperforming in equal measure. Portions of the Central Valley and Inland Empire are converting market-feasible development opportunities into housing development permits at relatively high rates.
