Addressing Southern California’s Housing Crisis: A Closer Look at Affordability and Production Trends

Southern California’s housing crisis continues to worsen, with affordability reaching new lows and homelessness on the rise. In Los Angeles County, over two-thirds of renter households are spending at least 30% of their income on rent, while 40% live in overcrowded or poor-quality homes. The situation is dire, with over 71,000 Angelenos experiencing homelessness in 2023.

To address this crisis, California state lawmakers have passed over 100 new laws since 2017 aimed at increasing housing production and diversity. These laws include the Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA), which assigns each local government targets for new homes, and new laws legalizing structures like accessory dwelling units (ADUs) and duplexes.

Despite these efforts, housing prices and rents in Southern California have continued to outpace household incomes. The ratio of median home values to median household income in Los Angeles County has more than doubled since 2010, making homeownership increasingly out of reach for many. Rental housing has also become substantially more expensive, with the income needed to afford median rent rising significantly over the years.

While some cities have been permitting more middle housing structures like ADUs, the overall growth in housing stock remains uneven across Southern California. Cities like Los Angeles and Irvine have seen significant increases in new homes permitted, but the majority of these are still single-family detached homes, the most expensive housing type.

To truly address the housing crisis and improve affordability, cities need to build a lot more homes and diversify the types of housing being built. While recent state laws have made some progress in this direction, more time is needed to evaluate their effectiveness and make meaningful changes to the housing landscape in Southern California.