CCRE/UC Center Sacramento Event: Calif.'s Housing Crisis: Policies for a More Affordable, Equitable and Sustainable Housing Future

Speaker:

Professor Carolina Reid, I. Donald Terner Distinguished Professor in Affordable Housing and Urban Policy, Department of City and Regional Planning, UC Berkeley

California faces a housing crisis of extraordinary scale and complexity. High rents and home prices — coupled with the lingering impacts of the COVID pandemic — are contributing to housing insecurity, high rates of homelessness, and deepening racial inequality. The politics of housing in the state can also feel intractable: cities continue to rely on exclusionary zoning tactics to thwart new supply, while developers, labor unions, NIMBYs, YIMBYs, environmentalists, and tenant advocates all stake out conflicting positions of what is needed to increase affordability and sustainability. This presentation will review the origins of California’s housing crisis, its implications, and lift up the policies that will be needed to chart a course to improved affordability, greater household stability, increased racial equity, and reduced homelessness across the state. Professor Reid specializes in housing and community development, with a specific focus on access to credit, housing and mortgage markets, urban poverty, and racial inequality. Dr. Reid’s work seeks to inform state and federal policy, and she has consulted on projects for state and federal agencies.

Dr. Reid discussed policies such as revising impact fee structures that affect building costs, examining local ordinances that impede the implementation of S.B. 9, and subsidizing renters with tax refunds, similarly to the tax deductions given to homeowners for mortgage interest.

View the recorded event here.