In California, we talk a lot about affordable housing. I’d much prefer we build affordable housing rather than talk about it. Proposition 45, the Building and Affordable California Act, would make it easier to do just that. It would allow us to build more of the homes that Californians need, including single-family homes in the suburbs as well as condos, townhomes and apartments in our cities.
For far too long, we’ve prioritized every issue in the book over the simple goal shared by most Americans and most Californians: the dream of owning a home. For far too long in California, we’ve made that dream unattainable.
California is failing our young families. New family-sized homes outside Dallas are going for less than $200,000 today. The same homes built by the same company in Hemet, 80 miles from Los Angeles, are going for a minimum of $400,000. At least $75,000 of that additional cost comes from regulatory burdens, such as unlimited appeals, on homes we need.
The results of these higher prices are entirely predictable: fewer homeowners and more homelessness. A recent study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and the California Policy Lab found that people who move out of California are 48% more likely to become homeowners within seven years than those who remain in the state.
Study after study has also tied increases in rents to increases in homelessness. We see this every day where I work. At Inner City Law Center, we provide free legal services to low-income families, fight back against slumlords and help homeless veterans move off the streets and into housing.
Our clients find us when they need us most, and hearing their stories can be heartbreaking. The hardest part, however, is knowing that no matter how many people we reach and no matter how many cases we win, the exorbitant cost of rent in our state will continue to push hundreds of thousands more Californians into homelessness every year.
That is why Inner City Law Center supports Proposition 45. We see every day what California’s broken permitting and approval process is costing us.
Proposition 45 would establish clear, enforceable timelines for reviewing and approving essential projects, including affordable housing. It would also require courts to resolve legal challenges to those projects within 270 days. For affordable housing builders, that means a predictable path from application to construction, so more of every dollar goes into homes instead of delays — because Californians cannot afford to wait. For our clients, that means a better shot at making it into an affordable apartment.
By setting enforceable timelines for determining application completeness, environmental review, post-entitlement approvals and litigation, Proposition 45 is expected to shorten delays by two to 10 years or more and add nearly 200,000 homes over the next decade.
Proposition 45 would set these timelines without taking decisions away from local communities. It would not dictate the outcome; it would create a more predictable timeline for reaching a decision. Environmental review and public participation would remain part of the process, and cities and counties would retain their authority to approve or deny projects. Roughly 88% of lawsuits against housing projects under the California Environmental Quality Act target infill housing — housing near existing jobs and transit that California says it wants to encourage. A system that makes climate-friendly infill housing harder and more expensive to build does not produce better environmental outcomes.
California was built on dreams. People come from all over the world to build their fortunes here. But for the California dream to survive, we must allow homes to be built for families in our cities and suburbs. Until we allow homes, condos, townhomes and apartments in our cities and towns, from Venice on the beach to Banning in the desert, from Imperial Beach in the south to Crescent City in the north, we can’t claim the mantle of being a welcoming and prosperous community.
We can once again be a place where it’s possible to stake your claim and build your fortune, starting with the ability to buy a home. By lowering housing costs and letting us build more homes faster where Californians want them most, Proposition 45 would make it easier for our children and future generations to keep dreaming right here, in the state we are lucky to call home.
Mahdi Manji is the director of public policy at Inner City Law Center.
