04/19/2024

California worse than every state but one for building housing

California ranks 49th in the nation for housing per capita, highlighting how seriously state policy makers need to take the state’s housing crisis, gubernatorial candidate Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom said this month.

The ranking comes from a 2016 report from McKinsey Global Institute titled “A Tool Kit to Close California’s Housing Gap: 3.5 Million Homes by 2025.”

In it, McKinsey found that only Utah has produced fewer houses per capita than California and estimated that the state needs to crank out close to 4 million homes in the next seven years if it wants to house a booming population.

“Benchmarked against other states on a housing units per capita basis, California is short about two million units,” the report said. “To satisfy pent-up demand and meet the needs of a growing population, California needs to build 3.5 million homes by 2025.”

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