Yes: But we aren’t likely to build enough housing to solve the affordable housing problem in growing regions.
While it is clear that the high cost of housing is the result of building less housing than necessary to accommodate a growing population, the reasons for this under-building are complex. Many argue that planning and zoning regulations are overly burdensome and result in less housing production and higher housing costs. But while it is easy to oppose costly restrictions, each of our zoning and planning rules has been imposed for specific reasons. It is difficult to imagine voters in most cities removing rules that protect existing neighborhood character, ensure health and safety in new housing or limit the parking and traffic impact of new development.
It makes sense to do everything within reason to reduce unnecessary regulatory burden on housing developers, but even sensible and popular limits on land use and building quality are likely to mean that we build less housing than our high-growth regions need. This in turn means that we will need proactive affordable housing strategies for the foreseeable future.
And, while any increase in the supply of housing helps address the problem, it is easy to underestimate just how much more we would need to build before we got to the point that we didn’t also need affordable housing programs. San Francisco’s chief economist estimated that the city would need to build more than 100,000 new housing units before the additional supply would reduce the market rent citywide to a level that was affordable to lower-income residents. That is more new housing than has been built in San Francisco since the 1920s.
