This month Californians worried about the cost of housing were offered the rarest of gifts: a glimmer of hope.
New numbers released by the Newsom administration show that California added homes to its housing stock at a faster clip than any time since the Great Recession — 123,350 additional units, or an increase of 0.85%.
Over that same period, the state’s population declined, marking the third year in a row that it’s fallen from one new year to the next.
Put those two numbers together and a surprising statistic emerges: There are now more homes per person — 3,770 units for every 10,000 Californians — than there have been since at least 1991.
For a state that has long suffered from too many people trying to cram themselves into too few homes, that’s an encouraging number at first glance.
It’s also the kind of news that might lead a person to wonder: Does this California exodus mean the state’s perennial housing shortage is finally coming to an end?
The long answer is “it’s complicated.”
Though many analysts have tried, no consensus exists on just how many more homes the state would need to build (or how many more people would need to leave) before we can call an end to the crisis and start to see rents and home prices fall within reach of working and middle-class Californians.
But the short answer is “almost definitely, no.”
Much of the outflow of residents is driven by the high cost of living. In March, the median price of an existing single-family California home was $791,490, more than twice the national median of $375,700.
“When house prices go up, people leave,” said Dowell Myers, a demographer at the University of Southern California.
Gov. Gavin Newsom said as much in a recent interview with UCLA’s Blueprint, naming the cost of living as the “principal driver” and its chronic shortage of homes “our original sin.”
And while experts don’t agree on exactly how much additional housing the state might need to…
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