PD Editorial: No break in the forecast for high housing costs

California’s weeklong heat wave should end today, but it’s going to take more than a change in atmospheric conditions to bring down the soaring price of housing.

New projections from the UCLA Anderson Forecast show rents continuing to climb, especially for low- and middle-income residents in the state’s major metropolitan areas.

The outlook isn’t any better for prospective buyers, especially younger people trying to purchase a home for the first time.

California is enjoying one of its longest economic expansions since World War II, propelled by growth in the state’s service and information industries. The state also is experiencing slow but steady population growth.

But housing construction hasn’t kept pace with demand.

David Shulman, a senior economist at the UCLA Anderson Forecast, wrote that tighter credit standards since the Great Recession, slower income growth, the hollowing out of the middle class and the emergence of single-family home rental businesses are contributing factors.

Tight inventories and record prices are a statewide, and even national, concern.

However, most land-use decisions are made by cities and counties, and Shulman’s report said regressive zoning and environmental regulations, especially in job-rich coastal communities, are making housing “ever-more unaffordable” for middle- and working-class families.

Here in Sonoma County, barely one in four households meets the income requirements to qualify for a loan to buy a median-priced home, and the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment chews up about 40 percent of median household income.

Prices will continue to spiral out of reach until the supply of housing increases.

Gov. Jerry Brown and some state legislators want to restrict local regulation of affordable housing. But a top-down approach isn’t the answer, especially when local officials have made affordable housing a priority.

Santa Rosa adopted a housing action plan with a goal of 5,000 new units, an increase in the city’s housing stock of about 8 percent, over the next five years. The council already had identified the SMART rail corridor as a priority area for housing, and it recently allocated $2.75 million to subsidize construction of 37 affordable units at three locations in east Santa Rosa.

Sonoma County supervisors voted this week to sell two tracts of publicly owned land for housing development - the old headquarters of the county Water Agency on West College Avenue and the Chanate Road complex that includes the old Sutter Hospital. As many as 970 housing units could be built between the two locations, according to county officials.

However, before anything is built at either site, those visions must be turned into specific proposals, which would in turn be subject to public scrutiny and require City Council approval.

Even then, as Santa Rosa Mayor Chris Coursey says, “the city doesn’t build housing. Developers do.” The city, Coursey told the editorial board recently, has approved plans for 3,000 housing units that have yet to be built.

One thing the city could do is survey those builders to find out why they haven’t followed through and what, if anything, could be done to expedite their projects - as well as the future developments the city is counting on to lower the temperature of the housing market. One thing the city can’t do is wait for the heat wave to pass.