Comment by giantg2
2 days ago
"There are still places where homes are like 250k or less."
By land mass that's the majority of the country. Population concentration is the real issue.
2 days ago
"There are still places where homes are like 250k or less."
By land mass that's the majority of the country. Population concentration is the real issue.
This is what people in about five cities in the US think.
I live in San Antonio, a metro of 2M people (city itself is one of the 10 most populous in the US). That's pretty sizable. Median home is between 260K and 310K. That is, of course, with the larger homes you'll find here vs SF/Chicago/LA/etc.
San Antonio is in the middle of the state with 360 degrees of growth and relatively flat. California’s land growth has half of that with hills and mountains near the desirable areas.
It all comes down to zoning. The demand requires capacity and the only way to add it given the geographical constraints are through infill development. Still, cities are getting dragged kicking and screaming to these conclusions, hence the opposition of SB79, as well as the entire concept of SB79 of differential upzoning vs simply widely upzoning. Even just reverting to pre 1960 zoning plans would see LA's zoned capacity rise from the present day 4.5 million (it is in the 90s% as far as population to zoned capacity) or so to something north of 10 million. If you adjust it to the ratio of that pre 1970s zoning plan, when LA had about 2.5 million people in it, the city would be zoned for 20 million with today's population.
In fact that is all that really needs to be done to ameliorate the housing crisis in California: pass a single law that repeals every single zoning adjustment from after say 1960. Or pass a law that mandates a 4:1 ratio of zoned capacity to population. The ship will right itself if it is allowed to.