Opinion: California can learn from other states how to build affordable housing

A building inspector at a construction site in San Diego Image from city video This column was originally published by CalMatters Sign up for their newsletters Overwhelmingly Californians rate the intertwined issues of housing supply living costs and homelessness as the state s greater part pressing issues as a contemporary poll by the Community Initiative Institute of California confirms The terrible trio as one might term it also draws constant verbal acknowledgement from the state s politicians from Gov Gavin Newsom down and he and legislators have enacted dozens perhaps hundreds of measures to address it Nevertheless there s little evidence that their efforts have had material impact Either the three situations are beyond the ceiling of politics to address a distinct possibility or the political efforts to date have not been vigorous enough Why one must wonder is California plagued while residents of other states enjoy lower housing and living costs and experience much lower rates of homelessness Shouldn t our political and civic leaders be examining what these other states are doing right or are they so afflicted with self-righteous hubris that they cannot entertain such a thought A new and very detailed evaluation of housing policies in the nation s largest metropolitan areas confirms that California is an outlier when it comes to increasing housing supply and moderating its costs Titled BUILD HOMES EXPAND OPPORTUNITY the document is a product of the George W Bush Institute at Southern Methodist University America s fastest-growing cities offer lessons on how America can address its housing affordability predicament the document declares Based on our analysis of the largest metropolitan areas and a deep dive into large metros in the Sun Belt and Mountain states places scoring best for pro-growth housing and land-use policies are mostly large Sun Belt metros from the Carolinas through Texas to Utah The metros doing the best job of meeting their housing demands the statement says have policies that make it easy for developers to build That includes allowing higher-density housing in substantial fractions of every city reducing minimum lot sizes allowing residential construction in commercial areas reducing or eliminating parking requirements and embracing innovative technologies such as modular construction and D printing In addition to adopting specific housing policies that spur rise the document continues metros that are meeting demand also pursue complementary policies such as having enough educational and therapeutic services allowing fine-grained mixing of land uses and human exercises in as numerous places as feasible allowing dynamic changes in land use rather than trying to freeze neighborhoods and providing amenities such as walkability revitalized live-work-play downtowns and great parks and trails So one might ask which metro areas are hitting all the right buttons and which are not as determined in the investigation The top pro-housing metros are all either in the Sun Belt particularly Texas California s arch-rival or in the mountain states such as Utah and Idaho No is Charlotte NC and No is Austin the Texas capital which is becoming a powerful competitor with California s Silicon Valley Not surprisingly California metros are heavily represented on the list of the nation s the greater part restrictive metros While Honolulu is the least accommodating Oxnard is No Nine of the are in California They include in order after Oxnard San Jose San Diego Riverside-San Bernardino San Francisco Sacramento Bakersfield Fresno and Stockton It would be tempting to dismiss the Bush Institute s review as biased because it comes from Texas but it contains a wealth of detail and explains how the content were evaluated A better response from California politicians would be to read the document and determine what more California could do to make the state housing-friendly The state s current path on housing other living costs and homelessness is going in the wrong direction CalMatters is a constituents interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California s state Capitol works and why it matters