Tag: housing crisis

California voters regularly name out-of-reach housing costs and homelessness as among the most important issues facing the state. Now lawmakers are calling their bluff. Next year the electorate will likely get the chance to put unprecedented gobs of money where its mouth is.

The housing market has seen significant changes in the past year. Mortgage interest rates have been climbing and housing inventory has declined. Even though the median home sales price in the country has dropped, it’s still a challenge to find affordable real estate.

California’s housing crisis can seem insurmountable. The median home price is more than $800,000, the state needs millions of additional homes to give everyone a place to live and homelessness is on the rise. Progress is abysmal. The state called for the construction of 180,000 new units annually between 2015 and 2025 to close the gap. We built fewer than half as many, only about 80,000 new units per year.

The severity of California’s housing crisis is difficult to exaggerate. Families in which spouses both have solid middle-income jobs struggle to afford mortgages for condos, not just single-family homes. Families in which spouses both have lower-income jobs often share apartments with others. Many single employed people — and some families — have no choice but to live in their cars. The nation’s richest state is also, perversely, its most impoverished.

Fresh from beating back a recall, the governor signed a package of bills to address the California housing crisis. But what do these new laws mean for housing affordability in a state where median home prices have already shot past $800,000?