How to meet California's housing needs and protect the environment

The housing crisis is one of the most important challenges facing California today. The dramatic loss of state funding for affordable housing, the high cost of land, and zoning that restricts residential density are just a few of the factors that have exacerbated the problem. 

As job growth continues to exceed housing growth, workers must live further from work resulting in unreasonable commute distances. This paper outlines the factors that have led to the housing crisis and its effects on California’s population and economy. 

Sierra Club has been active in housing and related growth issues for several decades. We strongly support: 

● Residential growth plans with dense housing that will reduce driving to meet our 2030 greenhouse gas targets. 

● Land around transit stations zoned for higher density development to facilitate transit use. 

● Incentives for housing production within infill areas, including along transit corridors and commercial areas. 

● Legislation that motivates the development of affordable and infill housing, especially within designated growth areas within an adopted urban growth boundary. 

● Strong tenants’ rights, especially for vulnerable and low-income communities to fully participate in the decision-making process to ensure that projects do not negatively impact their community’s environmental quality or risk pushing them out of their homes. 

● Development directed toward areas within the urban growth boundary, in order to avoid adverse impacts upon wildlife habitat, critical watershed lands, open space lands, and scenic values. The Current Housing Crisis Today’s housing crisis is largely the result of housing policies and a land-use pattern that was set 70 to 100 years ago. 

Areas of rapid employment growth have rarely planned for the construction of affordable housing within a reasonable commuting distance. Rather, local governments and the state have encouraged a sprawling development pattern that has led to a severe jobs and housing imbalance.

Housing is especially unaffordable in coastal areas, where two-thirds of Californians live. The most affordable areas in California are inland areas. However those too are starting to see dramatic increases in housing costs. 

When we discuss the future of housing, we must place it in context with the existential fight of our time— to attack the worst effects of climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The state has pledged to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 40% below 1990 levels by 2030. To do so, Californians must drive less and walk, bike, and use mass transit much more frequently than they do now. 

What caused the crisis? 

The high cost of housing in most of California’s coastal cities and suburbs has been caused by a number of factors, including: 

● The dwindling supply and high cost of available land, especially in coastal communities. 

● Zoning that restricts residential density and limits the efficiency with which we use land. 

● Labor costs that have significantly increased due to a skilled labor shortage and code requirements for labor intensive building systems. 

● Codes that require builders to use higher quality materials—such as windows, insulation, and heating and cooling systems—to achieve certain energy efficiency goals. The costs can be recaptured in lower energy bills, but they do increase upfront costs. 

● Development fees—charges levied on builders as a condition of development—that have increasingly replaced the property tax as a source of funding for infrastructure and are consequently higher in California than the rest of the country. 

● The “fiscalization of land use” caused by Proposition 13, which leads local jurisdictions to favor commercial growth, that pays sales tax and needs fewer public services, over housing projects that are often viewed as a negative drain on local resources.

Read the entire "Sierra Club California Housing Policy: Meeting Our Housing Needs and Protecting the Environment."