Over the past half-decade, California lawmakers have signed off on almost a hundred laws seeking to alleviate the state’s deepening housing crisis. Yet developers still aren’t building anywhere near enough affordably priced homes for everyone who needs them.
Now, a state assemblymember from San Jose is pushing a novel proposal he believes could finally jump-start affordable housing development by allowing the state government to get into the homebuilding business.
Alex Lee, a 27-year-old Democrat, has written a bill that would create a state agency to develop “social housing” — publicly owned housing that would be affordable for people with a range of income levels.
While skeptics may dismiss the idea as a progressive pipe dream doomed to repeat the failures of underfunded federal public housing programs, Lee points out that California agencies already hire developers to build housing at universities and other public property across the state.
“Wouldn’t it be cheaper and more effective if we just did development ourselves?” Lee asked in an interview.
With its own development agency, Lee argued, the state could save costs by taking a more unified approach to the process of planning, financing and constructing housing. And by removing any profit motive, he said the agency could focus its mission on building affordable multifamily properties while being less affected by swings in the economy.
Unlike most public housing in the U.S., Lee’s proposed social housing would be available to low-, middle- and even high-income residents, who would pay no more than 30% of their earnings to rent or buy units leased out by the agency. Two in five Californians already spend more than that on housing, classifying them as “cost-burdened,” according to the independent California Budget and Policy Center.
Central to the plan is that the rates paid by higher-income residents offset the cheaper prices charged to lower-income households. That, backers said,…
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