LAFCos Destroy California Housing Affordability

Whenever the Antiplanner blames Oregon’s high housing prices on planning, someone says, “What about California? Their housing is even less affordable, and they don’t have statewide land-use planning.” California doesn’t have statewide planning, but a new report from the Cato Institute shows that it has something worse: LAFCos.

LAFCo is short for local area formation commission. In 1963, the California legislature created these commissions — one for almost every county — to oversee the formation of new cities and service districts and annexations to those cities and districts. LAFCos are governed by members of the councils of each city in the county plus the county commission.

LAFCos were not created to fight urban sprawl, which was hardly a blip on the political radar in 1963. But the legislature failed to foresee that the cities would soon use the power of LAFCos to preserve their tax bases by keeping developers from “escaping” to unincorporated areas outside their borders. They drew urban-growth boundaries and vetoed annexations in order to boost the value of the land within their boundaries.

In 2000, the legislature gave LAFCos the additional mission of controlling sprawl, but in fact LAFCos had become de facto growth-management agencies long before that. Thanks to LAFCos, California is the most compactly developed state in the nation. The 2000 census found that 94.4 percent of the people in the state live on just 5.1 percent of the land. California urban areas have an average density of 4,000 people per square mile, while urban areas in the rest of the country average just 2,400 people per square mile.

It will gradually lead to sexual disorders like early discharge, low semen volume and low sex drive. order levitra They can read the symptoms cheapest viagra as it varies depending upon the physical and psychological makeup from the person. Forzest functions perfectly in curing impotence and reducing any further disruptions in sexual activity and helps him attaining complete fulfillment. generic order viagra So you also should choose Kamagra online Australia option. buy cheap cialis the original source Not coincidentally, California also has the second-least affordable housing in the nation (Hawaii, which passed the nation’s first state growth-management law in 1961, is number one). Cities used the sprawl debate to justify their growth boundaries, but California actually has plenty of land.

If California had allowed people to build homes at the national aveage density of 2,400 people per square mile, the state’s urban areas would cover 8.5 percent of the state instead of 5.1. Is that 3.4 percent worth driving housing costs up by hundreds of thousands of dollars?

One of the unintended consequences is that the black population of many parts of California is declining even while the overall population is growing. Some fear this is a symptom of racial discrimination, but it may be simpler than that: black incomes tend to be lower, and low-income people can’t afford to live in California.

As the Antiplanner’s faithful ally, the Dynamist, notes in a recent column in the Atlantic, the U.S. now consists of affordable cities, which are “good for raising children” (which also means they are “boring”), and “superstar cities,” that have lively leisure activities and creative workplaces. Ironically, the people in the superstar cities are the ones who are most likely to talk about the need for diversity and mixed-income communities, even as their policies effectively push low-income people to other states and urban areas.

In any case, please download and enjoy the Cato study, which is full of fascinating insights about California land-use and transportation policies.

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About The Antiplanner

The Antiplanner is a forester and economist with more than fifty years of experience critiquing government land-use and transportation plans.

7 Responses to LAFCos Destroy California Housing Affordability

  1. Dan says:

    The 2000 census found that 94.4 percent of the people in the state live on just 5.1 percent of the land. California urban areas have an average density of 4,000 people per square mile, while urban areas in the rest of the country average just 2,400 people per square mile.

    Not coincidentally, California also has the second-least affordable housing in the nation [emphasis added]

    Since the CATO URL is broken, Randal, and we can’t follow your – surely – evidence-based reasoning, can you show us what you did with your dependent or independent variables to derive this evidence-busting conclusion? That is: what did you do with your amenity proxies to account for land rents?

    DS

  2. johngalt says:

    I can probably guess. The nicer and more amenity rich the area the more apt are productive people to stay despite the heavy handed planning. Govt. officials in less amenity rich areas cant get away with the facist rule making.

  3. Dan says:

    You surely know, johng, yet another jurisdiction soundly rejected (2:1) a small-minority ballot measure to take away property protection?

    Yes, the vast majority wants the rule-making that the small minority wishes wasn’t reality. Property value protection and all.

    DS

  4. Builder says:

    Dan, I can see that this vote is of momentous importance. After all, everyone knows that, “As Mat-Su goes, so goes the nation.”

  5. Dan says:

    Yes, Builder, momentous indeed. I was surprised too, reflecting on it from my past work in the Borough.

    Rugged individualist, gummint-avoiding and property-rights-protecting Mat-Su wanted no part of the private property rightist movement. Of course, they’re sharp cookies up there and saw right thru the ruse.

    If they can’t make it happen there, fuhgeddaboudit.

    DS

  6. Pingback: Link to Cato Paper Corrected » The Antiplanner

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