Systemic failures in housing, health, and employment are often blamed on individuals rather than the systems themselves, which ignores the fact that wages have not kept pace with housing costs, the health system ties care to employment, and jobs are automated, outsourced, or turned into gig work without benefits.
Abundance, a book by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, argues that many of America’s most damaging crises are the result of deliberate choices that constrain supply, slow delivery and fragment authority, and that to have the future we want, we need to build and invent more of what we need.
California’s freeway expansion has been a major driver of the state’s housing crisis, displacing thousands of families and demolishing homes and businesses, while failing to provide meaningful traffic relief.
California’s population has increased slightly in recent years, but the state’s decades-long failure to build enough homes to meet demand has resulted in high rents and prices, making it difficult for people to afford to live in the state.
The Housing BOOM Act, proposed by U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff, seeks to increase housing production across the country, with a focus on affordable and middle-income housing, by expanding the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, creating new federal programs, and investing in homelessness prevention.
A severe shortage of construction workers is driving the nation’s housing crisis, resulting in an estimated $10.8 billion annual loss linked to delayed projects and homes that never get built, and requiring a national workforce mobilization to address the issue.
Homelessness is primarily caused by unaffordable housing, not addiction or mental illness, and is exacerbated by a lack of safety nets and the collapse of low-cost rentals.
America’s housing crisis is due to decades of underbuilding and a lack of political incentives to build more homes, resulting in a shortage of 2-5 million homes and rising prices, and a need for new policies to incentivize renters to push for more housing and to shift to modular construction to reduce costs.
Poverty in the Bay Area increased in 2023, with more than 245,000 residents falling below the poverty line, due to rising rents, cuts to federal and local assistance programs, and a cost of living that is outpacing wages.
The Davis Joint Unified School District Board of Education is facing a potential loss of 1,000 students over the next decade due to rising housing prices, falling birth rates, and changes in UC Davis’s workforce patterns, which could lead to school closures and staff cuts unless two proposed housing developments are approved.
California has quietly shifted its housing policy over the past five years to favor housing production, with CEQA reform, SB 423’s continued streamlining, Prohousing incentives, and an empowered HCD now working to strip away red tape and encourage more housing production.
The City of Davis is facing a housing crisis and should focus on facilitating the addition of housing and affordable housing, rather than pursuing costly and speculative microgrid projects.
By Ben Christopher, CalMatters This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters. Imagine…
The Searchlight Institute’s report reveals that Americans are united in their concern over unaffordable housing costs, but divided on how to solve the crisis, with Democrats leaning towards regulation and Republicans favoring deregulation and incentives.
Assemblymember Chris Ward’s bill, AB 253, has passed the Legislature and is now on Governor Gavin Newsom’s desk, allowing applicants to hire licensed private professionals to conduct plan checks for certain residential permits when local building departments cannot complete reviews within 30 business days, in order to address long delays in residential building permits.
The Town of Los Gatos is attempting to block two housing projects by using a legal technicality, but housing advocates argue that the state’s housing laws are working as intended to force housing forward and that the town’s actions are a desperate attempt to delay the projects.
Millions of Americans are living in homes that are crumbling and unsafe due to a lack of maintenance, and programs designed to help are overwhelmed with long waiting lists, resulting in a need for federal support to address this aspect of the housing crisis.
Governor Gavin Newsom has launched a statewide task force, SAFE, to prioritize and remove encampments along state rights-of-way in California’s ten largest cities, while connecting people with services and shelter.
The Renewing Opportunity in the American Dream (ROAD) to Housing Act is a bipartisan bill that seeks to address the US housing crisis by reducing regulatory barriers, providing financial incentives to communities that increase housing production, and streamlining environmental reviews for federally funded housing projects.
Wall Street’s financialization of housing has driven up rents and made homeownership increasingly out of reach for millions of Americans, with corporations buying up homes in bulk and driving up costs, leading to a call for social housing as an alternative.