03/29/2024

Dan Walters: California Has Big Housing Shortage

California’s severe housing crisis is easy to describe – supply too low, prices too high.

The state’s population is still growing, albeit slowly, and as it adds about 350,000 bodies each year, it needs at least 150,000 new units of housing to keep pace.

We’re not meeting that standard. Housing construction, as high as 213,000 units in 2004, plummeted to 36,000 in 2009.

It has since rebounded somewhat and now approaches 100,000 units, mostly rental apartments, but that’s still well short of demand.

Therefore, the demand-supply gap still widens, particularly in coastal areas. Both prices of single-family homes and rents have skyrocketed, hammering low- and moderate-income families.

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