IE Business Daily Business news for the Inland Empire.
A California Supreme Court decision that will allow cities and counties to require developers to sell some of their product at below-market rates will only worsen the state’s housing crisis, an Inland housing official said Tuesday.
The home building industry is in “extreme disagreement” with the decision handed down Monday, which seeks to make more houses affordable to lower income families, said Carlos Rodriguez, chief executive officer of the Baldy View chapter of the Building Industry Association of Southern California.
“However well-intentioned this might be, it will not make it easier for people in California to buy a house,” Rodriguez said. “It will make it more difficult, and it will punish home builders for a crisis they did not cause.”
The best way to create more affordable housing is to build more houses, and the best way to do that is to remove the regulatory barriers that make it difficult for developers to build, Rodriguez said.
The court’s unanimous decision, which is meant to help lessen the state’s chronic shortage of affordable housing, gives municipalities two courses of action when issuing building permits: the aforementioned selling at below-market rates, or pay into a fund for low-cost housing.
For now, the state’s home building industry hopes cities and counties won’t chose either alternative the court gave them with its decision Monday.
“When they look carefully I think they will see that these are both bad options,” Rodriguez said. “All it does is artificially lower the price of housing, and that won’t solve the problem.”
