Last year California’s homeless population jumped 13.7%, compared with 3.6% in New York and 1% nationwide, according to an annual survey by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Most homeless people around the country live in emergency shelters or public transitional housing. But in California they camp outside in public spaces. People who once […]
Homeowners with solar panels also benefit from the state’s net metering subsidy, which compensates them for the excess power they produce and remit to the grid at the retail rather than wholesale rate. Yet California sometimes produces so much solar power that it has to pay Arizona to take it to avoid overloading power lines. […]
California may soon become the first state in the nation to require that virtually every new home be equipped with solar panels. The California Energy Commission on Wednesday is expected to mandate solar arrays on almost all new single-family houses built after Jan. 1, 2020, as part of the state’s fight against global warming. The […]
When one is trying to reduce the cost of something, imposing a mandate that increases its cost is counterproductive. The commission argues that it will add only around $40 a month in payments but will save $80 a month in utilities (based on a $9,500 installation cost). My calculations suggest it will add $50 to […]
The new energy standards add about $25,000 to $30,000 to the construction costs compared with homes built to the 2006 code, said C.R. Herro, Meritage’s vice president of environmental affairs. Solar accounts for about $14,000 to $16,000 of that cost, with increased insulation and more efficient windows, appliances, lighting and heating accounting for another $10,000 […]
Over a million more people moved out of California from 2006 to 2016 than moved in, according to a new report, due mainly to the high cost of housing that hits lower-income people the hardest. “A strong economy can also be dysfunctional,” noted the report, a project of Next 10 and Beacon Economics. Housing costs […]
Fees to build “granny flats,” which are often nearly equal to construction costs, will shrink sharply under legislation the San Diego City Council unanimously approved this week. The goal is to help alleviate a severe local shortage of affordable housing by spurring construction of more granny flats, which are additional housing units on an existing […]
Over the decade ending in 2016, more people moved out of California than moved in, and the state still has the highest housing costs in the nation. Job growth is up across low-, mid- and high-income earners, but while wages have increased across all categories, low-income earners haven’t seen their paychecks increase at a comparable […]
California voters this year will likely decide whether cities across the state should have more power to enact stronger rent control. Rent control proponents behind a proposed November ballot initiative that would allow cities and counties to pass strong rent control laws say they now have enough signatures to qualify the measure.
Rising wages, loosening credit standards and demographic shifts are all creating momentum for owning rather than renting. The homeownership rate rose from the prior year for the fifth consecutive quarter in 2018, according to U.S. Census data released Thursday. It held steady at 64.2%, unchanged from the prior quarter and its highest level since 2014. […]
Even with apartment rents near record highs, rising construction costs and city fees are slowing down housing development around the Bay Area. In San Francisco, 4,500 new units were completed in 2017, down 14 percent for the year. Completions are expected to fall further based on the pipeline. . . . Developers are grappling with […]
The median Bay Area home price surged to an all-time high of $820,000 in March, up 9.3 percent from February and up 14.7 percent from March of last year, research firm CoreLogic reported Tuesday. The previous peak was $784,000 in November. The report includes newly built and existing homes and condos sold in all nine […]
Los Angeles County will see moderate job growth of just over 1 percent for the rest of this year, but the median home price will rise as much as 10 percent. . . . The forecast notes that nonfarm employment in Los Angeles County increased by 1.4 percent between February 2017 and February 2018, a […]
America’s housing shortage is more wide-ranging than cloistered coastal markets, stretching from pricey locales such as California and Massachusetts to more surprising places, such as Arizona and Utah. Some 22 states and the District of Columbia have built too little housing to keep up with economic growth in the 15 years since 2000, resulting in […]
California’s housing shortage is a crisis that the next governor will have to fix, the six leading candidates for the job say. . . . California has added fewer than 80,000 homes each year over the past decade, while the need has been closer to 180,000, according to the state Department of Housing and Community […]