My thought when I first read the headline: 'DUH!'
From Capital Public Radio:
Some High-Rent California Cities Aren't Building Enough Apartments, And Zoning Is Part Of The Problem
A housing project near Broadway in Sacramento.
Andrew Nixon / Capital Public Radio
Chris Nichols
Tuesday, August 27, 2019 | Sacramento, CA
Cities near some of California’s biggest job centers are discouraging the construction of new apartments despite high rents and strong housing demand, according to a recent Brookings Institution report.
It found several affluent, smaller cities near Silicon Valley and Los Angeles went years without building a single apartment, even though they were home to the highest rents in the state. The report said strict local zoning rules prevented development, partly by limiting the amount of land reserved for apartment buildings and by restricting height and density.
“Unfortunately, a lot of the most expensive places where there’s the most demand for people to live are actually doing the worst job at building apartments,” said Jenny Scheutz, co-author of the July report. “They’ve put in place a bunch of regulations that essentially make it hard or impossible to build apartments there.”
The Brookings Institution is a nonpartisan research center.
The report examined cities across the state, and found higher rents don't necessarily lead to more construction of apartment units.
Of the 12 cities with the highest median rents as of 2012 — all more than $2,000 per month at the time — researchers found nine failed to build a single apartment from 2013 to 2017. Those include Atherton, Hillsborough, La Cañada Flintridge, Los Altos Hills, Monte Sereno, Rancho Palos Verdes, Rolling Hills Estates, Ross and Westlake Village.
Over the past decade, California has built an average of about 75,000 homes per year, according to data cited by the California Building Industry Association. That includes single-family homes, condos and apartments.
But it's far from the pace researchers and state leaders say is needed to meet demand. It’s also far from the promise Gov. Gavin Newsom set during his campaign of building 3.5 million new units by 2025.
The building industry data also show California produced more multi-family units than single-family homes in five of the past six years. But, as the Brookings report demonstrates, that growth hasn’t been evenly spread out.
Scheutz said California’s housing growth has been concentrated in two places in recent years: Urban metros, which are building apartments, and in exurbs, communities beyond the suburbs where single-family homes are still being built. Closer-in suburbs aren’t building as much.
Those larger metros “can’t bear all the weight of this,” she added. “The suburbs need to do their part.”
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Read the rest by clicking this link:
http://www.capradio.org/articles/201...MSrrYGd-jmQ3x0
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