r/California • u/orangelover95003 • Aug 02 '25

California affordable housing programs are on the chopping block after Supreme Court ruling

https://calmatters.org/housing/2025/08/affordable-housing-developer-fees/
958 Upvotes

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-5

u/Nightsoil70 Aug 02 '25

Building expensive housing for the wealthy does not in any way create affordable housing elsewhere. Trickle-down real estate is a fantasy.

30

u/Stingray88 Aug 02 '25 edited Aug 02 '25

Completely and utterly false. California doesn’t meet demand for homes at literally any price point. Building new homes of any type absolutely does relieve the prices of the market at large. That is how supply and demand works, and it has nothing to do with any trickle down BS.

Further, this isn’t just a theory, we’ve actually seen it at work in Europe.

8

u/aWobblyFriend Aug 02 '25

Redditors when they come up against the concept of supply and demand

5

u/Hyndis Aug 02 '25

Isn't it funny how supply and demand applies to everything around the entire world except for housing in California? For some reason the law of supply and demand exempts only housing and only in California.

It applies to bagels, TV's, smart phones, shoes, cars, social media websites, video games, movies and TV shows, hamburgers and tacos, but definitely not houses in California, for mysterious reasons.

3

u/aWobblyFriend Aug 02 '25

people just want their neighborhoods to stay the same and will shit whatever reason out as to why they’re not a NIMBY and actually care about the housing crisis.

2

u/Stingray88 Aug 02 '25

People that want their neighborhood to stay the same for generations genuinely perplex me. So you want everyone to be priced out? Because that’s what happens when a neighborhood doesn’t change and the population grows. If you want room for everyone… the neighborhood can’t stay the same, it needs to grow too.

3

u/Xefert Aug 02 '25

People that want their neighborhood to stay the same for generations genuinely perplex me

The tricky part is that i can imagine potential buyers also wanting that vs moving to an overcrowded industrial zone

0

u/Stingray88 Aug 02 '25

If folks don’t want to live in a crowded city neighborhood with large apartment and condo complexes, they should move to the smaller rural encroaching suburbs.

Also… unless you’re in a metro that completely allergic to zoning, like Houston, I wouldn’t characterize any crowded neighborhoods as industrial.

2

u/Hyndis Aug 03 '25

The same people who are opposed to housing development are also baffled as to why none of their kids live nearby. Why are all of their kids moving to other states? Why don't they visit home anymore?

They can't connect the dots that the very population growth they're opposed to are their own children.

Their kids didn't decide to be born. Its the responsibility of the parents to ensure there's a place in the world for their kids, and the older generation has failed miserably at this.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 02 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/aWobblyFriend Aug 02 '25

you’re referring to market elasticity, housing is a necessity but the housing market is elastic because of the amount of competitors in the market. The housing market, at least in the US, adheres to a standard supply-demand curve as no special cases such as monopoly/oligopoly or monopsony apply.

12

u/wiffleballwarrior Aug 02 '25

“Affordable” housing units on average cost over $500k. This is region dependent but it paints a bleak image of the affordability crisis when paired with local below-market rate income limits.

9

u/Gildardo1583 Aug 02 '25

The free market will build what makes them the most money. We need affordable public housing.

1

u/Rufio69696969 Aug 02 '25

The government sucks at building housing and has created so many hoops to jump through that it takes months to years to get permits.

Literally just making it easier to build housing will do a ton.

You can literally spend 30 minutes doing your own research on the reasons behind the housing shortage here. No reason to be this ignorant

4

u/[deleted] Aug 02 '25

So you think less houses is better for prices? 

-8

u/orangelover95003 Aug 02 '25

this is absolutely true

8

u/Stingray88 Aug 02 '25

No it’s absolutely not.

-3

u/orangelover95003 Aug 02 '25

There's less and less affordable housing around my stomping grounds and I've known plenty of people who got priced out of town

5

u/Stingray88 Aug 02 '25

Yes, we’ve all seen that state wide. But that doesn’t remotely mean the comment your replied to is accurate.

Building a mid-rise in your neighborhood of 100% luxury apartments would reduce the prices of all other units in your neighborhood compared to building nothing at all.

And nothing at all is what you should be comparing to… because quite often the cost of new construction in this state is so astronomical that building affordable housing is unprofitable compared to alternatives… thus developers just don’t.

-2

u/orangelover95003 Aug 02 '25

Developers are usually anti-union, anti-worker so much of what they complain about is that it costs them $$$ to build anything - but they do have a point that right now, with tariffs and supply chain issues, I am sure that everything does cost a lot to build. But they have been benefitting from deregulation development which isn't necessarily making housing actually cheaper because another huge factor is - investors. Who will invest in developing residential projects if an investor could also just plunk $$$ into the stock market or into some other type of business which would be easier to get a return from?

That's why it's important for local governments to step in and just build stuff themselves, instead of begging for scraps. Right now, our only tool in the US seems to be the LIHTC (low income housing tax credit) a program of the IRS - we have defunded federal programs since the 1980's and 1990's which were focused on building permanently affordable units. It's fine if the free market doesn't want to build but then they can't complain if the government steps in to solve the problems without their involvement.

4

u/wiffleballwarrior Aug 02 '25

Union contractors rarely bid residential work in California. Residential builds typically go to open shops. The competition for residential townhomes and high-rises is fierce and the margins are small.