The Cost to Build New Housing Keeps Rising: State Legislation Aiming to Reverse the Upward Trend

As the Terner Center has previously documented, the cost of building housing in California has skyrocketed in recent years with materials and labor costs seeing the biggest increases. These heightened costs to build compound the state’s shortage of affordable and market-rate housing and ultimately lead to decreased affordability for households at all income levels. While the Governor and State Legislature have enacted significant housing reforms and invested billions of dollars into housing programs over the last several years, little work to date has focused directly on lowering the cost to build.
Several bills under consideration in the California legislature this session aim to do just that by aiming to reduce regulatory and other project costs. But do these efforts add up to enough to actually have a tangible impact? A new blog post The Cost to Build New Housing Keeps Rising: State Legislation Aiming to Reverse the Upward Trend explores pending legislation and considers whether enactment of these bills—from reducing parking requirements to lowering impact fees—are likely to move the needle. Read the full analysis here.