California’s push to solve its housing crisis is falling well short of the mark, according to new figures showing that only a small fraction of cities and counties are on pace to meet the ambitious construction targets set under Governor Gavin Newsom’s administration — a trend that carries significant weight for fast-growing communities across the Inland Empire and greater Southern California.
State regulators require every California city and county to plan for housing across four income categories, from market-rate development down to units affordable for the lowest earners. Newsom’s overall goal calls for 2.5 million new homes statewide over eight years, or roughly 312,500 units annually. With this summer marking the halfway point of that timeline, the results paint a discouraging picture.
Of more than 530 jurisdictions statewide, fewer than a third are permitting enough “above moderate” housing — generally market-rate homes — to stay on pace. The numbers are even more troubling for the state’s poorest residents: just 32 jurisdictions, less than 6%, are on track to meet targets for “very low” income housing, meant for those earning less than half of their area’s typical income.
There are a few bright spots. Five California localities are currently permitting enough housing to hit all four of their state-mandated income targets. But taken as a whole, the data shows that nearly every corner of the state is falling behind on the housing production needed to keep pace with demand.
Local government officials have pushed back on the criticism, arguing that state-imposed targets don’t account for real-world constraints. Jason Rhine, a lobbyist for the League of California Cities, noted that cities themselves don’t build housing and have limited power to compel private developers to break ground on new projects.
But housing advocates counter that local governments still hold significant sway over whether construction happens at all. Laura Foote, executive director of the pro-housing group YIMBY Action, said cities may not control developers directly, but they do control the fees, zoning rules and permitting processes that can make or break a project’s feasibility.
For Southern California communities already grappling with high housing costs and long permitting timelines, the figures underscore a broader statewide challenge: turning ambitious housing goals into homes that actually get built.
In other news from Sacramento, the California Supreme Court handed down two rulings this week with implications for courtrooms and taxpayers statewide.
In one decision, the court ruled that judges must be allowed to make exceptions to a state law barring electronic recordings during most hearings — a setback for labor unions that had fought to preserve jobs for professional court reporters. The shortage of certified court reporters has left millions of hearings without any official written record, complicating efforts by everyday litigants to appeal their cases. Recordings offer an alternative, allowing parties to later have proceedings transcribed by certified professionals when a full-time reporter isn’t available.
Court reporter unions maintain that trained professionals produce more reliable transcripts than recordings. But critics say requiring court reporters — who can cost thousands of dollars to hire privately — has created an unequal system where wealthier litigants have far greater access to accurate case records. Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero wrote that the ongoing failure to provide low-income litigants with a way to obtain an official transcript denies them meaningful access to the judicial system.
In a separate ruling, the state’s high court sided with Marathon Petroleum in a tax dispute with the city of Carson, a decision that could reshape how local governments across California handle business tax refund claims. The dispute stemmed from a 2022 assessment in which Carson determined that a Marathon subsidiary owed additional money under the city’s oil-industry business license tax. The company paid the disputed amount but sought a refund under state law, while Carson insisted the refiner follow the city’s own internal refund procedure instead.
The Supreme Court ruled in Marathon’s favor, finding that local governments cannot force taxpayers to first exhaust a city-specific process before filing a claim under the state’s Government Claims Act. Guerrero wrote that local agencies cannot lawfully require compliance with such internal procedures as a precondition for submitting a tax refund claim — a ruling likely to influence how cities and counties throughout the region, including here in the Inland Empire, handle similar tax disputes going forward.
Original source: CalMatters
