CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2020 OR THEREAFTER
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2020 OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“LINK HOUSING FIX TO HSR, SOLVE TWO BIG PROBLEMS”
So
SB 50 is dead, most likely at least for the rest of this election year. How
does California now solve its housing problems without that most ambitious of
proposed tactics for doing the job?
Maybe
it’s time for Gov. Gavin Newsom and the labor unions who strongly back him and
his policies to revert to a plan he talked up while running for governor back
in May 2018: Link a necessarily complex housing fix to the ever-troubled bullet
train project.
One
perpetual California problem could help solve another.
Newsom
strongly suggested this during a campaign interview, saying housing projects
could be made to dovetail with the bedeviled bullet train project, now
abuilding in the Central Valley and nowhere else.
Doing
this would be completely consistent with Newsom’s holistic approach to
government, perpetually insisting it’s best to try to tie things together.
It
would also follow logically from Newsom’s late-January admission that the
single goal he touted loudest during that 2018 campaign – a demand to build 3.5
million new housing units in the state by 2025 – was grossly exaggerated. While
it's real, the need for new housing is not as big as Newsom believed then; his
goal was based on incomplete information.
The
pullback in the governor’s goal was perhaps the most under-reported major story
of this winter, buried in the flood of news coverage from both the impeachment
trial of President Trump and California’s problem with homelessness. His goal
had already proved unrealistic: unsold housing inventories in various parts of
the state were high enough in 2019 that developers did not press for permits to
build more than about one-fifth of what Newsom wanted during his first full
year in office.
The
aim of solving the supposedly gigantic housing shortfall was a main
justification for SB 50, the failed attempt by Democratic state Sen. Scott
Wiener of San Francisco to densify housing in almost all areas near light rail
stations and major bus routes. The fact so much new housing is not really
needed clearly took wind from the sails of SB 50.
But
there nevertheless remains a big shortfall of affordable housing. Fewer than 25
percent of California households can now afford to buy homes – new or
pre-existing – in the state. Less than 50 percent can afford so-called
affordable units, which now average more than $500,000 apiece to build. Even
when their sale price drops to about $350,000, while other prices in the same
developments are lifted to compensate for it, many working families aspiring to
home ownership still can’t buy.
That’s
where high speed rail can come in. The planned bullet train route runs through
some of the least pricey land in California, in both the Central Valley
southeast of the San Francisco Bay area and in High Desert areas north and
northwest of Los Angeles.
Building
there could bring housing prices down enormously, as land costs remain a huge
element in today’s high prices. Even though building in these places has
increased, development remains slow because commutes to the state’s biggest job
centers simply take too long.
Add
the bullet train to the equation, and everything could change. Commute times
between Tracy and the Silicon Valley, or from Bakersfield to Los Angeles, would
be under one hour, far less time than many current freeway commutes. So no more
2:30 a.m. bus departures for workers who live in Tracy and work at Tesla’s
Fremont plant.
Since
2018, Newsom has never repeated his observation that “The bullet train
project…could be very useful in helping with housing.”
Instead,
the state has heard Wiener and others gripe about the supposed evils of urban
sprawl and single-family home zoning. But the prospect of living in a
single-family home with breathing room played a big part in attracting millions
of today’s Californians to the state during its big growth years. This was one
reason for the failure of Wiener’s densification efforts.
For
sure, tying the bullet train to new housing could create immense incentive to
build in areas that get relatively little developer attention today.
It’s
probably the most holistic, least controversial way to solve much of the
housing problem.
-30-
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His
book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and
the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover
fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net
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