Few would doubt that California’s single most important economic/political issue is a growing housing shortage which distresses millions of Californians and is the largest single factor in the state’s highest-in-the-nation poverty rate.
The state says we need to be building 180,000 new housing units each year to keep up with population growth, replace housing that’s been demolished or is uninhabitable and, finally, chip away at an immense backlog.
California once was building as many as 200,000 units a year, but production fell to scarcely one-seventh of that level during the Great Recession and only recently has climbed back to a current 130,000, still 50,000 short.
These stark facts should be kept in mind as voters contemplate four statewide ballot measures that purport to address California’s housing crisis because two would make only tiny dents in the problem, one would have virtually no effect and the fourth would probably make it worse.
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