WHY IS RENT SO HIGH IN CALIFORNIA?

The chart below explains it all. It tells the whole sad story. We need to build 180,000 new housing units in California every year to keep up with population growth, but we are only building 80,000, and this has been going on for 20 years. All of the housing problems we have in California, all of them, can be traced back to this one simple fact. Every year, our housing shortage gets worse, and this ever-worsening housing shortage explains why rents keep rising faster than inflation, why the vacancy rate is so low, why people are doubling up in apartments and houses, why people are paying a higher and higher percentage of their income on housing, why college graduates in California move back home with their parents after they graduate, and why thousands of people in the Bay Area are living in RVs, tents, cars, and trucks. Unless we build enough housing to keep up with population, all of these problems will just get worse.

California’s Population Explosion. In 1945, the population of California was 8 million. Today it is 40 million. That means that for every 1 person who was living in California at the end of World War 2, there are now 5 people living here. I live in a house that was built in 1902. In 1902, the population of California was 1.5 million. That means that for every 1 person who lived in California when my house was built, there are now 26 people living in this state. Like most people in the Bay Area, I am not happy about this tremendous population growth. I too wish that fewer people were moving to California, but they are coming here whether we like it or not. And its easy to see why they are coming. This truly is the Golden State! Suppose you were living in a city in a Rust Belt state full of closed factories, where the unemployment rate was 20% and the minimum wage was still $7.25 an hour. Wouldn’t you want to pack your bags and move to California? The unemployment rate in California is 4%, and the minimum wage in California will soon be $15.00 an hour.

America’s Black Hole. My sister Judy once called California ‘America’s Black Hole.’ I never forgot that because it’s true. What she meant was that moving to California is like entering a Black Hole. Nothing that enters a Black Hole comes back out. Once people move to California, they never go back to where they came from.

Adios Baltimore! I grew up in Baltimore, a Rust Belt city. The population of Baltimore peaked in 1950 and has been declining ever since. The heavy industries that once supported Baltimore’s prosperous working class are gone. Baltimore’s shipyards that once employed 50,000 people are gone. The Glen L. Martin aircraft factory that once employed another 50,000 people is also long-gone. The Bethlehem steel mill that once produced 10,000 tons of steel a day is gone. As the jobs dried up, so did Baltimore’s population. Thousands of row houses in Baltimore with their famous white marble stoops are just rotting away. All of Baltimore’s once-fashionable downtown department stores are now abandoned. There are dozens of cities just like Baltimore all over this country, once bustling industrial centers that have been in decline for generations. Without the jobs, what is to keep people in Baltimore? Baltimore is hot and muggy in summer and can be bitterly cold in winter. There are no interesting geographical features in Baltimore like mountains or waterfalls or palm tree lined beaches. We can’t stop people from leaving places like Baltimore and moving to California, and it is a fantasy to imagine that people won’t come here from places like Baltimore if we just don’t build housing for them.

Not In My Back Yard. We need more housing, a lot more housing in California, housing that ordinary working people can afford, but we’re not building it. Most of the city councils around the Bay Area are dominated by NIMBYs. (Not In My Back Yard). These politicians and the voters who elected them support laws that discourage new housing from being built, like downzoning, height limits, and and inclusionary housing laws. They also support laws that encourage landlords to remove existing rental units from the market, like rent and eviction control laws. Rent control gives owners of rental properties, particularly small rental properties, a financial incentive to get rid of their tenants and sell their properties to owner-occupants or to use their rentals for other purposes, like turning apartments into AirBNB rentals or offices. We need to accept this one fact – a lot of people are coming to California whether we like it or not. We are only hurting ourselves by discouraging developers from building new housing and by encouraging landlords to go out of business.