Housing affordability in high-cost areas like the Bay Area, Los Angeles, and New York City has rightly received a great deal of attention by lawmakers, the press, academics, and residents within these communities. Important questions raised in this discussion are: What laws or regulations might impede housing construction in high-cost areas? What solutions might help reduce those barriers with a minimum impact on other important values, such as environmental protection, public participation, and equitable treatment of low-income communities of color?
To answer these questions, this phased research project joins legal research with qualitative research methods to examine land-use entitlement processes in selected high cost cities. This work specifically explores the obstacles to increasing infill development, a necessary strategy to address the housing supply crisis while being sensitive to health and environmental concerns. Because academics and policymakers agree that there is an inadequate supply of housing across many income levels in California, we began our work first in California’s coastal communities where housing costs are the highest. Low-income families living in California’s high cost coastal communities, specifically, are both cost-burdened and living in crowded conditions. Low-income families that work within these coastal communities, but cannot afford housing near their work, commute 10% further than commuters elsewhere, with potentially significant implications for health and the environment. To engage in comparative analysis, we then began examining inland urban areas.
This work began in five jurisdictions in the Bay Area and has since expanded to include seven cities in the Los Angeles area, and an additional five cities across California, including Sacramento and Fresno.
The Silicon Valley Community Foundation, the California Community Foundation, Long Beach Community Foundation, and Chan Zuckerberg Initiative have generously provided financial support for this ongoing study. This project is a collaboration between faculty and students at the Urban Community and Health Equity Lab at Columbia and BerkeleyLaw’s Center for Law, Energy, and the Environment
To learn more about this research, please contact Moira O'Neill at mko2115@columbia.edu or Giulia Gualco-Nelson at gmg2170@columbia.edu.
Upcoming presentations: PLPR 2019 Conference
Past presentations: Research examines the role of local development regulations in the Bay Area housing shortage.
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