Housing Crisis One of Building, Not Lack of Lots

For the last decade, builders have bemoaned the lack of available land throughout California as a major reason they are putting up fewer new homes, creating a crisis that is pushing prices skyward and making affordable housing scarce.

Now leading researchers, while confirming the worst about a housing crisis, suggest that the state won’t be running out of land for homes any time in the near future.

In fact, most of California’s crowded metropolitan areas, researchers say, contain ample developable land to house millions of new families through the next two decades--enough, in fact, for three times the projected growth.

The findings by the land-use experts, from state housing agencies and UC Berkeley, are the result of a yearlong study sponsored by the state Department of Housing and Community Development. The report, though short on specific recommendations, is being regarded as significant for planning.

Researchers found that 25 million acres in 35 of the most populous counties could be used for housing. This is land that could meet demand through 2020 without impairing agricultural production or harming the environment.

Still, the supply of usable acreage in Los Angeles, Orange and Santa Clara counties will run out in only 10 years, based on projected household growth rates; four other counties will start to run out of land by 2020, the report states.

“The evidence is in that we have a housing crisis,” said Tim Coyle, senior vice president at the California Building Industries Assn., a Sacramento trade group. But, he said, “there is a way out.”

The report itself shows how to deal with housing shortages, Coyle said. “This is as good of a road map as the state Legislature and municipalities need to adopt the right policies to meet our housing needs,” he said.

It will become “a bible in the housing debate,” said Jan Breidenbach, executive director of the Southern California Assn. of Non-Profit Housing.

Statewide, developers are building less than 60% of the housing needed to satisfy demand during the next decade, a shortfall of more than 93,000 units a year, according to the study.

The report says the real roadblock restraining home building is political pressure, particularly at the local level, to halt or limit growth, state researchers said.

“Producing more housing isn’t seen as an important thing at the local level, but elected officials need to understand that we need more housing in California,” said John Landis, principal author of the study, called “Raising the Roof.”

Real estate analysts agree. In the next 20 years, the state is expected to add 5 million homes--nearly half of them in the Southland. The region must find ways to build more units at greater density, they said.

If it doesn’t, they said, home prices will rise and employers will look elsewhere for a lower cost of living for them and their workers.

The system for approving housing plans is a fragmented process that needs to be streamlined, the report states. The process can take several years and is administered differently in every city and county.

Moreover, local leaders usually favor the larger tax revenues that retail stores generate over the property taxes that housing projects bring in. They also tend to wilt under the heat of neighborhood groups that oppose new home development, especially lower-cost affordable housing, said Landis, a UC Berkeley professor.

Indeed, much of the fall-off in home building has been in new apartments and condominiums--projects that neighborhood groups fought against because of the perception that such housing would lower their home values.

Developers and land-use experts are frustrated at times with the inflexibility of local governments, especially in the three counties that are running out of space.

“I’m concerned that we haven’t demonstrated the vision to change our thinking about land-use patterns,” said Richard Gollis of Concord Group, a Newport Beach real estate advisory firm.

Orange County, for instance, lacks the “political will” to create more effective land-use policies, he said, such as allowing land zoned for commercial properties to include housing. That kind of change is key to building homes closer to where people work, he said.

Better regional planning would lead to better land use and less sprawl, said Steven Sanders, executive director of the multi-interest California Futures Network. But letting each city plan for its own housing needs “isn’t working,” he said.

Regional or state action is needed, analysts say, because the report has found that metropolitan areas will absorb 95% of the expected growth in the coming years. Southern California faces an average annual shortage of 48,000 households, which compounded over 13 years would create the need to build a city the size of San Diego, Landis said.

“Certainly, for Los Angeles, Orange and Santa Clara counties, there can be no doubt that they’re running out of land,” said William Fulton, publisher of California Planning and Development Report, and an expert on housing and land-use issues.

“What the report says is that the future of Los Angeles is more like New York than Phoenix,” Fulton said. “A lot of economic activity has to be crammed into a finite amount of land, and that creates a whole different, and more complicated set of choices about what to do.”

By allowing more apartments, condominiums and houses on less land and adopting policies that are less costly for developers, such as lower fees, even Los Angeles and Orange counties could accommodate growth, build housing for a wider range of incomes and stretch their supply of raw land beyond 2010.

But it would take an unprecedented building boom over the next decade to meet demand. Through the 1990s, builders constructed an average of 111,000 units a year, compared with the 200,000 annual average put up in the previous four decades. To meet demand, they would have to build 220,000 units a year for the next 10 years.

Meantime, as the housing shortage worsens, the struggle for housing will be fought across the Southland in different ways, Landis said.

In Los Angeles County, for example, the challenge will be to create housing for ethnically diverse and moderate-income wage earners. In Orange County, finding capital for constructing middle-class rental housing will be critical. In Ventura County, tensions between potential homeowners and slow-growth advocates need to be eased. And the Inland Empire must absorb new residents without sparking animosity against spreading development.

While laying out the causes for housing shortages, the study stops short of saying how metropolitan areas can absorb future growth. It did not take into account how land is currently zoned, nor did it measure how much land could be redeveloped, because it said reliable figures do not exist.

The report, which will be sent to California legislators and local officials statewide, urges lawmakers to make housing a priority.

“If we don’t plan appropriately for housing needs, we will not be able to maintain the quality of life and the economic prosperity we currently enjoy,” said Cathy Creswell, acting deputy director of the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development.

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Times staff writer Daryl Strickland can be reached at daryl.strickland@latimes.com. The “Raising the Roof” report by the California Department of Housing and Community Development can be found at https://www.hcd.ca.gov.

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Room to Build

Statewide, experts say, there’s developable land to accommodate triple the number of new households expected through 2020. But Los Angeles and Orange counties have far less capacity.

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Developable % of new households that land * land could accommodate (in acres) (1997-2020) Los Angeles 213,154 84% Orange 68,325 76 Riverside 708,324 371 San Bernardino 1,150,000 716 Ventura 103,537 253 Statewide total 8,100,000 318

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* Excludes farmland, wildlife and environmentally sensitive areas

Source: “Raising the Roof” study, California Department of Housing and Community Development