Southern California is falling well behind on one of California's biggest quality-of-life challenges: building enough homes that regular people can actually afford.
At the midpoint of the state's current housing-planning cycle, 208 of 212 Southern California cities and counties had failed to reach the permit levels needed to stay on pace with state housing goals, according to CalMatters.
Here's what to know
To address California's long-running housing shortage, the state gives each city and county an eight-year homebuilding quota divided into four income tiers.
But most jurisdictions are not keeping up, especially on lower-cost housing, CalMatters found.
The strongest showing is in "above moderate" housing, or market-rate units, where fewer than one-third of cities and counties statewide are on pace in permitting.
The results are much worse for cheaper homes: only 32 jurisdictions, or less than 6%, are meeting their "very low" income targets.
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That underperformance is especially striking because most local governments already have housing plans the state has approved.
Across California, CalMatters identified only five jurisdictions on pace in all four income categories: the unincorporated areas of Plumas, Napa, Yolo and Mono counties, plus the city of Placerville.
More background
The pattern varies a lot by housing type.
Irvine, for example, has already permitted more than 6,000 of the 8,671 market-rate homes it is supposed to add by 2030.
Yet it has reached just 9% of its very low-income target and only 3% of the next most affordable category.
Funding is a big part of the problem.
Affordable housing in California often depends on public subsidies or other mission-driven financing, and state support has been constrained since a voter-approved 2018 bond that paid for a major affordable housing program was exhausted.
What's being done?
California does have a mechanism meant to pressure lagging jurisdictions.
A 2017 state law allows many apartment and condo projects to move through a faster approval process when a city or county reaches the midpoint of its planning cycle without enough permits in the above-moderate, low- and very low-income categories.
That covers nearly the entire Southern California region that has crossed the halfway mark: 208 of 212 jurisdictions.
Even so, the law has major limits.
Developers told CalMatters that the affordable-unit set-asides and higher wage rules attached to the fast-track process can make projects financially viable only in the most expensive rental markets.
Since 2018, the law has been used to approve 27,961 units statewide — a meaningful number, but still far from enough to close California's housing gap.
Housing advocates are also supporting an $11.25 billion state bond aimed at restoring money for affordable housing development.
State regulators say California's housing rules are meant "to meet the housing needs of all Californians."
Current figures show many communities are still a long way from that mark.
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