California Needs a Marshall Plan for Housing, According to New Governor

New California Governor Gavin Newsom called for large-scale investment in housing in his inauguration speech, reiterating promises he made during the campaign. "When it came to housing, he briefly but pointedly called for a Marshall Plan for affordable housing," Brock Keeling writes for Curbed. The Marshall Plan, which sought to rebuild Europe after the Second World War, represents one of the largest U.S. investments in history.

Newsome argued that California had a particular obligation to act, contending that the homelessness crisis was a moral issue and pointing out that the state of California has an outsized importance in the United States.

In response to Gov. Newsom's call for ambitious housing action in California, blogger Alfred Twu created a blog post that illustrates how these lofty housing development goals (which would require the equivalent of nine new San Franciscos) could be achieved through infill development, rather than sprawl.