Home prices fall, but most can’t buy
Declining home prices in a buyer’s market have done little to ease a crisis in homeownership for low-wage earners, some experts say.
Only 25 percent of California families could afford to buy an entry-level home in the year’s first quarter, down from 26 percent last year, according to DataQuick Information Systems.
Sacramento-based Housing California says Stanislaus County buyers should earn $87,400 per year to qualify for a median-priced home of $340,000. But the median income here is $54,400.
A Washington, D.C.-based report this week said children in rentals are not as healthy and do worse in school than those whose families own the homes in which they live.
“Our goal is to ensure that affordable housing becomes part of the national debate by framing the important connections between housing and key social outcomes,” said Jeffrey Lubell, executive director of the Center of Housing Policy.
Inclusionary housing policies emerging in California can be “one tool in the arsenal to provide affordable housing,” said Darryl Rutherford of the California Coalition for Rural Housing.
Others include development fees, partnering with nonprofit groups and builder incentives such as density bonuses and waiving sewer connection fees. High-level grants help; state housing officials this week awarded more than $17 million in bond proceeds to boost affordable housing efforts in the Northern San Joaquin Valley.
Many local government agencies dabble in housing programs, but have largely shunned inclusionary housing.
“The status quo is ingrained there,” said Rutherford, whose group recently established a searchable Internet database of most inclusionary policies in California. “The thought process is, ‘This is my land. Let me do what I want. Government stays out. Housing is market-driven; it’s a commodity.’ ”
Nico Calavita, a San Diego State University planning professor who has written reports on inclusionary housing, agreed that many valley communities are politically conservative. And “developers are very influential” on politicians, he said.
But San Diego, known as a conservative bastion, was forced to embrace such policies by a critical shortage of homes for working people, Calavita said. He and Rutherford predict the same eventually will happen here.