The union has denounced the administration’s proposed wage increase of 12 percent over four years as inadequate because it fails to address what it contends are gender pay inequities in the state workforce. It also objects to the administration’s proposal that employees pay more for their health benefits.
As housing prices continue to rise in California, a significant number of our residents are being denied access to the American dream of homeownership. Today, only about one-third of our fellow citizens can afford to buy a median-priced home in the Golden State, down from a peak of 56 percent just four years ago.
As Bay Area cities scramble to find housing solutions to prevent displacement, a new report warns that the region is resegregating by race and class.
The rule requires that up to 25% of units in rental properties and up to 40% in for-sale projects meet affordability guidelines. Alternatively, developers can pay a fee to the city. . . Developers must pay construction wages on par with those required for public-works projects, hire 30% of the workforce from within city limits, set aside 10% of jobs for certain disadvantaged workers living within 5 miles of the project and ensure 60% of workers have experience on par with graduates of a union apprenticeship program.
“California generally leads in both overcrowding and severe overcrowding. The state’s share of overcrowded households in the nation is 27 percent, while the state has 30 percent of severely overcrowded households, almost 3 times its 11 percent share of households. Only Hawaii has a higher severe overcrowding rate than California, at 3.8 percent of households California’s severe overcrowding rate is 2.9 percent. By contrast, average for the United States is a much lower 1.1 percent.”
If there is anything that just about every Californian agrees with, it is that it costs too much to live in the state. Over the last few years, the price of buying a home or renting an apartment has become so burdensome that it pervades almost every issue, from the state’s elevated poverty rate to the debate about multimillion-dollar tear-downs to the lines of recreational vehicles parked on Silicon Valley side streets.
Homebuyers needed at least a six-figure income to afford the median-priced house in Orange and Los Angeles counties over the summer, the California Association of Realtors reported Wednesday.
Fresno is No. 7 on the 19-city list for cost-burdened renters, with 57.75 percent percent of renters paying more than 30 percent of their income on rent. The Stockton-Lodi region comes in at 56.84 percent for the No. 9 spot, while Modesto ranks 16th with 54.37 percent.
However, we did not find that the supply of housing was significantly affected by the incidence of short-term rentals in the City or County of Santa Barbara. This is because (1) compared to the total size of the housing stock, there are very few STRs in Santa Barbara City and County, and (2) very few of these homes are used as STRs full-time. . . Overall, we found that an STR ban across Santa Barbara County would increase the housing supply for local residents by only 0.1%.
Renters always get the same advice: Don’t spend more than 30% of your income on housing. That’s not just an anecdotal recommendation. According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, households that spend more than 30% of their income on rent are “housing-cost burdened.” And the heavier that burden gets, the more difficult it is to afford food, utilities, and other necessary living expenses. But how feasible is the 30% rule?
In a new McKinsey Global Institute report, A tool kit to fix California’s housing gap: 3.5 million homes by 2025, we look specifically at the US state of California and offer remedies for fixing a chronic housing shortage. Our objective is to provide rigorous, fact-based analysis on a charged issue, and to present a practical blueprint for how cities, state authorities, the private sector, and citizens can work together to unlock housing supply and ensure housing access.
California will have to build about 3.5 million homes over the next eight years, more than triple its current pace of construction, simply to keep up with expected population growth and hold down housing costs to affordable levels. But how could the state actually do it?
Generally, a closely aligned relationship between trends in owner occupied and rented housing costs would be expected . This was certainly true until 1970 (Note 1). In 1949 there was a 135 percent difference between the lowest median household value and the highest in the major metropolitan areas (Note 2). There was a similar 114 percent difference between the lowest gross rent and the highest (Figure 1). The house value variation was 18 percent higher than the rent variation. . . The close relationship between the variations in house value and rent was substantially broken in more recent decades. The 2015 American Community Survey shows that the variation among the major metropolitan areas in median house values is now a staggering 509 percent. The range between the least expensive and most expensive rental markets is a much smaller 158 percent (Figure 3). The difference in the variations between house value and rents across the nation rose to 222 percent, nearly nine times the 1969 figure.
Faced with an affordability crisis, mayors across the country have pledged to build thousands more units of housing. But a new analysis shows to meet those targets, many would have to exceed the construction pace reached at the height of the housing boom.
A density-only policy tends to raise prices, turning California into the burial ground for the aspirations of the young and minorities. This reflects an utter disregard for most people’s preferences for a single-family home — including millennials, particularly as they enter their 30s. . . Ultimately, the question remains over what urban form we wish to bequeath to future generations. Ours is increasingly dominated by renters shoved into smaller spaces and paying ever more for less.