Shortages and Abundance

Los Angeles has some of the least-affordable housing in the world. In 2014, median home prices there were 7.5 times median family incomes, beating out San Francisco (7.0 times), Honolulu (6.9 times), San Jose (6.8 times) and New York (5.1 times).


Developing this orange grove will have no impact on orange prices, but could go far to helping make housing more affordable. Wikipedia photo by Ricraider.

So naturally, some people in Ventura County, just north of Los Angeles and part of the Los Angeles urban area, think it is vitally important to protect farms and open space, and they are seeking approval of a measure that would require a vote of the entire county before any land could be rezoned for development. Median home values in Ventura County were just 5.8 times median family incomes in 2014, more because of incomes, which are a third higher than Los Angeles County, than home prices, which are just 4 percent higher than LA County. The open-space measure will serve to make housing even more expensive while it protects a resource that is already abundant: open space.

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According to the 2010 census, 88 percent of the county is rural, and that 88 percent houses just 3 percent of the county’s residents. About half the county is protected public lands, including 560,000 acres of national forests, about 50,000 acres in the Santa Monica Recreation Area, and nearly 2,500 acres in the Hooper Mountain National Wildlife Refuge, not to mention the Channel Islands, which are part national park and part Nature Conservancy reserves.

As far as agriculture goes, most of the private land in the county is considered farmland, but most of that is rolling hills, making it rangeland. Less than half of the county’s agricultural land is used for growing crops. (Ironically, much of the residential development that has already taken place is in the flat areas that have the highest agricultural productivities, while the rolling hills remain mostly undeveloped.)

Are the people who support open-space measures like this one so economically ignorant that they can’t see what they are doing to housing prices and how they are especially hurting low-income families? Or are they deliberately worsening an artificial housing shortage either to boost the value of their own homes or to force out undesirable (meaning lower-income) people? Either way, their proposal will do far more harm than good to the economy of California and Ventura County.

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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.

6 Responses to Shortages and Abundance

  1. prk166 says:

    Whether this lowers or increases the price of housing, it restricts peoples ability to move. It’s a gradation away from issuing living permits a la the Soviet Union and modern China.

  2. Ohai says:

    Are the people who support open-space measures like this one so economically ignorant that they can’t see what they are doing to housing prices and how they are especially hurting low-income families?

    Many of those same people also support minimum lot-size, parking, and building height ordinances, but of course the Antiplanner never questions economic ignorance of that sort.

  3. metrosucks says:

    Huh, who would have known!? Minimum lot-size, parking, and building height ordinances are what hurt low income families. Someone should tell New Yorkers the good news; they ought to have some of the cheapest housing in the country by this explanation!

  4. Ohai says:

    Someone should tell New Yorkers the good news; they ought to have some of the cheapest housing in the country by this explanation!

    It’s cheaper than Ventura County.

    Plus, you do realize that New York City does regulate building size, parking, etc . . . , right? You can’t just build a high rise apartment building anywhere you want.

  5. metrosucks says:

    Oh wow, housing prices are 1 point lower than in Ventura County, what a bargain!!!

    Btw, I know you’re thick because you’re a planner, but when people refer to NYC, they are generally referring to the central part and not to Long Island.

  6. btreynolds says:

    Just because New York has lots of tall buildings doesn’t mean that they don’t have lot-size, parking, and height restrictions. Plus, they have awful rent control policies.

    I bet you think the 2008 financial crisis was due to the banks being unregulated! 😀

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