Housing Models Compared: How Much Housing Does California Need?
Updated February 2021 | Gab Layton, PhD – President of the Embarcadero Institute
To the question, how much housing does California need, there’s a range of anwers. Only a couple make sense.
- Why do some state legislators refuse to trust the demographic analysis of their own Dept. of Finance?
- Freddie Mac’s analysis of California’s housing needs aligns closely with the Dept. of Housing and Community’s Pre SB-828 estimates.
- SB-828 introduced changes to HCD‘s methodology that resulted in a doubling of the estimated housing need. Most of the new increase falls under the heading of existing, not future, housing need.
- But when the question that is posed in government code “ do the estimates achieve a feasible balance between jobs and housing ?” is asked, the answer is that estimates from only two models – the pre SB-828 HCD and Freddie Mac – are feasible
