California Housing Law Ineffective

The California law designed largely to address California's undersupply of housing is doing little to boost the number of new homes being built, according to a study by the Public Policy Institute of California. "California's Housing Element Law: The Issue of Local Noncompliance" finds that in the 1990s, California cities and counties that met the law's planning requirements did not add new housing units at a faster rate than their counterparts who fell short of the requirements. The reason? The law requires cities and counties to plan for specific numbers of new housing units, including affordable housing, but provides no direct resources to get the housing built. "The housing element law asks local governments to identify sites for housing and to adopt measures to encourage new construction, but it pretty much stops there," says Paul Lewis, the study's author and PPIC program director and research fellow. "Planning does not necessarily translate into housing."

Thanks to Dateline APA