The problem
The whole problem
Every move in it is rational. The outcome is on the scoreboard.
California has been writing housing law since 1969, and almost every law since has been a response to the one before it. The State overrides the cities because the plans produced too little. The city slows what it can still slow. The builder chases the one tool that pencils, which is rarely the home the neighborhood is missing. The affordable operator stacks ten funding sources to close one project. Residents organize against whatever arrives, because what arrives is never what the plan said.
Every one of those moves is rational. The outcome is on the scoreboard, and how the law accumulated, bill by bill, is on Who Decides. Nobody designed the whole, and nobody is responsible for it. What broke was not the goal. What broke was the mechanism.
That is why we hold any housing policy, ours included, to four tests that cover the whole system. A law that solves one group's problem by creating another's is how the last fifty years were written.
What the current system does to them
What any solution has to deliver for them
Cities
A high-resource coastal city
What the current system does to them
Density bonus, builder's remedy and streamlining override the plan. The city cannot size evacuation routes, water or schools, because it cannot know what will be built, and affordable delivery means one-bedrooms in towers.
What any solution has to deliver for them
A plan it can rely on: the city knows what will be built, sizes its infrastructure against it, and can deliver affordable family homes on sites it chooses without a tower being the only instrument.
Cities
A low-resource inland city
What the current system does to them
Assigned housing numbers, with no money for the schools, parks and streets that growth requires, and tools built for hot markets: where rents and prices sit below what it costs to build, nothing pencils, and streamlining delivers nothing.
What any solution has to deliver for them
Growth that arrives with its infrastructure paid for, financing that closes the gap between what homes cost to build and what local incomes support, and investment in its existing neighborhoods on terms that let the people there stay for it.
Families
The next generation of homeowners
What the current system does to them
Priced out of the towns they grew up in, because the system produces rental housing and almost nothing a first buyer can own.
What any solution has to deliver for them
A path from renting to owning: starter homes priced within reach of local incomes, and financing a first buyer can carry.
Families
Working families
What the current system does to them
An affordable home usually means a one-bedroom after years on a waitlist, and the homes lost to displacement are not counted against the gains.
What any solution has to deliver for them
Family-sized affordable homes, two bedrooms and up, near work and schools, that stay affordable over time, with losses counted as carefully as completions.
Builders
Developers and builders
What the current system does to them
Discretionary review, litigation and years of entitlement risk, with the density bonus as the only dependable tool.
What any solution has to deliver for them
Rules known before the land is bought, approval timelines that can be financed, and economics under which the homes the plan calls for are the profitable ones to build.
Builders
The building trades
What the current system does to them
Entitlements that never become jobs: homes are approved, stall, and no one tracks why.
What any solution has to deliver for them
Approvals that become construction, on a steady pipeline a workforce can be built around.
Schools
Teachers and schools
What the current system does to them
Every district's funding runs through the property tax the State takes, and teachers cannot afford to live where they teach.
What any solution has to deliver for them
School funding held whole under any change to the property tax, schools built where the homes go, and homes teachers can afford in the districts where they work.
Ownership
Realtors and lenders
What the current system does to them
Policy funnels capital into institutional rental while for-sale production collapses.
What any solution has to deliver for them
A for-sale pipeline, and affordability instruments a lender can underwrite and a realtor can explain to a first-time buyer.
Operators
Affordable housing operators
What the current system does to them
Ten funding sources per project, and nothing funded in the neighborhoods their residents already live in.
What any solution has to deliver for them
Fewer funding sources per project, land and capital at costs that reach the deepest incomes, and investment in the neighborhoods they already serve.
Advocates
Housing advocates
What the current system does to them
Approvals that do not become homes, and a fight in every city.
What any solution has to deliver for them
More homes, faster, under rules that hold.
The State
The State of California
What the current system does to them
It mandates housing it does not fund, enforces through HCD, the Attorney General and the builder's remedy, and owns the outcome and the blame.
What any solution has to deliver for them
A system it can hold to account on outcomes, within its budget, with the civil-rights, fair-housing and safety floor kept, and without running enforcement project by project.
The second column is a requirement, not a promise. How our own proposal answers each requirement is on the Act page, stated as design choices with reasons.
If your interests are described wrong here, that is the conversation we want.
Every row on this page was written to be corrected by the person it describes.