Aug. 14: California Cities Are Falling Far Behind On Affordable Housing Goals

The DOJ released a memo this week saying it uncovered a long-standing pattern of sexual misconduct against inmates. It also reported inadequate safeguards at the prisons and added that the constitutional rights of inmates are being violated. Prosecutors made the findings at the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla and the California Institution for Women in Chino. State officials were given 49 days to address the violations or face a law. lawsuit. KVPR is now 100% community funded. A great way to show your support for public radio and this station is to purchase a $100 ticket for KVPR's $10,000 drawing. Purchase tickets now at kvpr.org slash 10K. And now to our main story. The progress report on housing in California is out, and the picture is looking bleak. An ambitious plan to build two and a half million more units in the state is falling short. Here's CalMatter's housing reporter Ben Christopher. Well, if the state is saying that these are the numbers that we need to hit to dig our way out of our affordability crisis, are we actually building to meet those numbers? And spoiler alert, but the answer is basically no. Ben's latest reporting tracks where cities stand in hitting their targets and the tensions building between state and local governments to meet those goals. California has four tiers of affordability ranging from market rate, moderate low to very low. Ben tells me why affordable housing or very low housing intended for the lowest income residents is suffering the most. By and large, most jurisdictions across the state are just not hitting their targets at any level. Less than a third of all cities and counties are hitting even their above moderate levels. Again, that's the market rate housing. That's the kind of housing where jurisdictions tend to do the best, and we can talk about that, but it's basically because that housing doesn't typically require subsidy, which is generally in short supply, whereas if you're making housing. or trying to plan for housing that is affordable to lower income folks. You tend to require state or federal or local or some combination of subsidy that is in short supply. But yeah, most jurisdictions are not even hitting those above moderate income level numbers. A few exceptions would be San Diego, Bakersfield. And then as you go further down the affordability spectrum, the numbers get. Very low. So you have, I think, only a couple dozen jurisdictions that are hitting their very low targets. Right. And you talk a lot about the tension of building, as in there's planning and then there's the actual building that happens. And to get from one point to the other, it means that developers are really working closely with city jurisdictions, right? Yeah, that's right. And this is an ongoing...

battle anyone who's kind of been plugged into housing politics in california over the last decade has known that a big tension point is between local governments and the state with the state really trying to by and large get locals to allow for more housing And that's usually in the form of zoning, easing zoning restrictions, making it easier to pull permits and get them delivered quickly, reducing impact fees and all those kinds of things. And with these production numbers, you have, you know, there are a couple different ways to look at it. If you talk to a lot of local governments, they will say, well, you see, there's been a lot of blame for local governments for standing in the way of new housing that a lot of folks argue the state really needs. But, you know, we've done our part and we're still not seeing the numbers. Another way to spin it, which you hear from a lot of pro-housing advocates and sort of the yes in my backyard advocates is that, well, this just proves that cities are still not doing enough and that by extension the state is not doing enough to require cities to really provide a regulatory environment that allows for this kind of construction. Now, that's, I think, an easier argument to make. for the above moderate housing, which doesn't require subsidy. Again, when you look at the really dismal production numbers on the lower end, that's also got to be a reflection of a lack of public dollars needed to build that kind of housing and make it affordable for folks who are earning low incomes. But then also, there are, of course, other reasons that people will build. Most housing is built by private developers or nonprofit developers. And so, Beyond the sort of regulatory environment, there's also things like interest rates and the cost of availability of labor and the cost and availability of materials and just market rent in a given location. And that's not always under the control of any local government. Right. And yeah, so basically what you're saying is developers want to build something that they know they're going to make a profit back with. And that's just, like you said, market rate housing. And when you get to the lower end of the spectrum, as far as affordable housing, what's categorized is very low, which is people earning less than half of an area's medium income. That means there's an extra funding that goes in, that needs to go into it. Like you said, subsidies, public funds. Yeah. Virtually nowhere in California are you going to be able to build housing that is going to be simultaneously. affordable to someone earning half of an area median income, even in relatively low income areas, and also make a profit or even not lose money. That's just the sort of the nature of cost of building in California. There are some arguments that, okay, we know if you really cut costs by changing some of those regulatory constraints, maybe you could get down to sort of the moderate or even low income. That's a theory. That's not been tested in California, really. But I think it's broadly accepted that at the very low level is he really do require either public subsidy or philanthropic dollars to come in to sort of being willing to either accept a lower rate of return or even a loss.

Yeah, and in your reporting, you said it's less than 6% of jurisdictions in California are on track to hit that very low target. And, you know, I want to go back a little bit to some policy that we saw during the COVID era, which were a lot of federal funds that came through ARPA funding. And that was sort of transferred into... Programs like the Home Key program here in the state that helped to build a lot of temporary shelters now are being turned into permanent housing. Is that what we're talking about as far as public funds and the type of housing that that would be built from that? There's a pretty wide and dizzying array of public funding that some of it, that the ARPA funds are really dedicated to extremely low income folks for the most part. The main state program for affordable housing development was funded through a bond passed by voters in 2018. That is basically run dry. And so I think there's some... estimates that I've reported on the past that there are something like 40,000 units of affordable housing that are permitted and ready to go and just lack that last bit of extra subsidy that would come from the state. And so I think there's a compelling case to be made that the lack of funding is the real constraining factor. One thing I'd like to note is that you wrote, historically, local governments haven't faced any consequences if nothing actually gets built. But, you know, the state recently did sue a handful of cities over their failure to create plans for new housing. Is this sort of part of that more aggressive action that you talked about earlier? You know, is policy enough to make new reforms that will invite new housing in? Or, you know, do you see the state having to use more force? Yeah, no, that is a big... trend here. And the reason that we're discussing this at all, I mean, I should point out that this, this whole process of requiring locals to plan for housing, this goes back to the 60s. So this is like a common feature of modern California. But up until this decade, really, or the end of last decade, it's been kind of a paper exercise, I think most people would acknowledge. Like, yes, cities are required to, to put these plans together, but the plans weren't. really didn't need to be particularly realistic. And if once the plans were set, nothing actually happened, then nothing happened. And in the last, you know, starting in 2018, I want to say a number of changes were made to this process. One is that the numbers themselves, the process that by which the numbers were were calculated was rejiggered in a way that really. put the numbers much, much higher. And so all of a sudden, you had jurisdictions who were required to plan for tens of thousands of units when in the past they'd only, you know, had to do a couple dozen. And then also the state through a combination of bills and also just regulatory changes through the news administration started to take this process really seriously and said, no, you can't just as a city, say, you know, point to a place that's not developable and say, okay, we're going to put some homes over there.

you know, check the box and say, no, you actually have to point to locations where there's a reasonable expectation that something could get built in the future. And so there's been a lot more back and forth between locals coming up with these plans, the housing department rejecting them, saying they're not good enough, going back and forth. And so this last round of litigation that you alluded to was because you have still a number of cities who are not, according to the state, coming up with the plans that are. good enough. And so that's part of it. And then once these plans are in place, whether jurisdictions are actually hitting their targets by permitting enough, that also now comes with some consequence. And so that's also a big change that reflects a broader shift that you mentioned that of the state really kind of taking this entire planning exercise quite a bit more seriously often over the objections of local government. Yeah, so much. finger pointing and lots of tension to sort through on this huge issue. Thank you, Ben Christopher, CalMatters, Housing, reporter. Appreciate you taking the time to join me. Thank you for having me. And you can read Ben's report and other news from across the state at cowmatters.org. And that's today's show. Today's episode was produced by Jonathan Linden and KVPR. I'm Sarath Hawk. Find the latest local news anytime at kvpr.org.

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