The crisis has led many to call on Bay Area lawmakers to ease housing rules by eliminating housing-density restrictions in the region.
“The lack of housing, including emergency shelters, is a critical problem that threatens the economic, environmental, and social quality of life in California,” according to the bill.
By merging the two measures, lawmakers hope to eliminate housing-density restrictions in “jobs-rich areas” in California. But counties with more than 600,000 people, such as Marin, would be given an exemption, and local housing prices would continue to soar if denser residential buildings aren’t built in the region.
Policies Have Long-Term Consequences
“In an unhampered market,” Ludwig von Mises Institute economist Ryan McMaken wrote, housing developers respond to consumers’ demands. So as rents rise, they build more housing.“Rents will then fall in those areas and developers will stop building housing—or build in other places—until rents rise again,” he explained, in an article on the institute’s website.
In his article for Reason magazine, Phelan argued that the California housing crisis is worsened by the ever-growing regulatory burden on developers. This is a product of years of mismanagement, as legislators kept passing new zoning laws and building restrictions, creating a massive regulatory body that made California a toxic place for both businesses and the poor.
“Policymakers need to wake up,” he wrote. “They need to acknowledge that they cannot have these regulations and low-cost housing.”
“California communities are vested with significant authority over land-use decisions, about how much can be built, and when and where. They have used that authority to create significant barriers for the construction of new housing,” he said. “Shrinking Rust Belt cities are the only kinds of places that are building as little housing as our coastal areas did in recent decades.”
Meanwhile, many California residents bemoan the government for “not doing enough” for the homeless and often push for new taxpayer-funded programs, instead of simply asking officials to cut the red tape.