Why California Housing Is So Expensive

Although master-planned communities are quite common in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, they are few and far between in California thanks to strict land-use laws and an anti-development mentality. So it is good to learn that a 15,663-home master-planned community will be built near Hesperia, just a half-hour north of San Bernardino and a little more than an hour from downtown Los Angeles.

To be called Tapestry, the community will be built on 9,366 acres of former ranch lands, of which 4,933 acres will be set aside as open spaces and parks. The homes centering around a 700,000-square-foot commercial area will include all kinds of housing from condos and town homes to single-family homes on 18,000- and 21,500-square-foot lots.

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The problem is that the Tapestry master-planned community was first proposed in 1987 — that’s 34 years ago — and not a single house has yet been built. The original proposal was approved by the local government in 1990, but environmental groups including the Sierra Club and Center for Biological Diversity sued, and the lawsuit wasn’t resolved until 2017, by which time the original developer was bankrupt. The settlement reduced the number of homes by 533 and gave environmentalists an option to buy some of the land, an option they probably won’t exercise because why bother to pay for it when the developers aren’t allowed to develop it anyway?

The lawsuit also mandates that developers install 2 kilowatts of solar panels for every 1,000 square feet of commercial or residential development. While this sounds good, it will also increase up-front housing costs, making housing less affordable than it might have been.

That’s the California way: delay developers into bankruptcy, pile on the development costs, and then complain that greedy developers are responsible for high housing prices.

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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.

4 Responses to Why California Housing Is So Expensive

  1. LazyReader says:

    California is expensive, it’s urban growth boundaries are not solely government based they’re demand based; like everyone wanting to be near the coast and foremost of all Geography based………… Mountains and agriculture to the north, Pacific ocean to the west, Scorching desert to the East and that shithole called Mexico to the South, People build civilization WHERE THERE’S WATER.

    Lennar corporation has shitloads of money, they should build artificial islands off the California coast like Florida did in the 1920’s. Beverly hills has a population density of 33,000 per sq mile, so a 10 sq mi island can host over 300,000 or basically every rich A-hole in Los Angeles. 90210………… 2.0
    And free up real estate for average folks to afford again.

    You wanna live in the desert; that’s fine, but this delusion you can take with you the East Coast vegetation and style of housing. Get used to water restrictions, driving 200 miles to go somewhere interesting, spending a lot of your time indoors with the AC on cause it’s Hot.

    Visit Monaco, Istanbul, Rome and Barcelona if you want examples of excellent and immaculate architecture in hot/dry climates. What did they do?
    1: High and Narrow: They built high without scraping the sky and built narrow without causing claustrophobia. Buildings are typically 3-5 stories but never more than 10 (in ancient history what was possible for the engineering technology of the time) and the streets were narrow, thus buildings provided shade. Many buildings of public had colonnades or awnings, something that provided shade for sun drenched pedestrians.
    2: Topography: Before the advent of the bulldozer and backhoe, building flat was never much for most societies less they were building whole cities. Like San Francisco’s hilly houses many desert cities have buildings that rise and fall with the terrain. Because a building on a hill with awnings is a shade lovers paradise.
    3: Interior height: When realtors advertise 9-10 foot ceiling they’re scamming you. Increase in ceiling height increase the useless air volume you have to heat and cool. Before HVAC, high ceilings where the chimney effect to dispose of air heat. Today’s plywood mcmansions are sealed tighter so they don’t breathe they heat up. It takes 19 BTU’s of energy to raise the temp of 1000 cubic feet of air one degree Fahrenheit. It take 2-3 times that to lower it (Air conditioning).
    Every inch in ceiling reduction per 1000 sq ft reduces volume by 83 cubic feet
    4: Love (and avoid) that Sun! Man: Despite thousands of years of technological progression in building, there’s no substitute for the southern facing house and the thermal mass wall. Passive solar design doesn’t involve new technology…which is why engineers in the Silicon age hate it. Orientation and shape, as well as the appropriate building materials. This resulted in many vernacular building styles in different parts of the world. In contrast, most modern buildings look the same wherever they stand.
    5: Think Fortress: Lot of desert and hot climate architecture in the ancient world by virtue of engineering technology of the day resembled fortresses…..But they served their purpose. THICK walls, some nearly a foot or more offered many perks, not just protection from cannon balls. The suns thermal energy requires almost 12 hours to be conducted through a wall 35 cm (14 in) thick. Narrow windows and louvers armored against the sun.
    6: Respect the Rock. Other than mud, Stone is humanity’s oldest building material. Two longest lasting building materials, Stone and ceramic. Regardless of environment; ages gracefully. While stone is expensive, it truly isn’t. It’s expensive to transport. But Hot places are not devoid of rock, it’s ubiquitous and using local materials in building construction usually entices the thrifty.
    7: Courtyard: air, light, privacy, security, and tranquility. Without the maintenance prone upkeep of the front and backyard.

    Another reason it’s expensive is because like Most sunbelt cities, 1/3 of ALL it’s land area is devoted to automobile infrastructure. The major highways 10-12 lanes wide which should be converted to boulevards and highways centered; instead pedestrian/human friendly transporation are ignored/gutted.

  2. prk166 says:


    Lennar corporation has shitloads of money, they should build artificial islands off the California coast like Florida did in the 1920’s.

    What in the same of you-know-what are you going on about?

    a) A California bueacracy and NGO lawsuits that dragged Tapestry out for 40 years ain’t going to let no one be building any islands

    b) California doesn’t have the topography, the existing barrier islands now shallow coastal water to mitigate the costs and risks of the project

    c) They didn’t build artificial islands in Florida. There was a on-off project in the 1920s where a shit ton of $$$$$$$ was spent to build a couple tiny islands for maybe what is today 200 housing units. MINISCULE. And that’s it. Even in developer friendly Florida they never again did such a thing. It doesn’t make financial sense.

  3. LogiRush says:

    @prk166, @lazyreader
    I remember seeing a documentary about the history of San Francisco Bay, and how land was reclaimed from the Bay using infill. I seem to recall a mountain was leveled to get infill for land reclamation. Of course, that practice was stopped in the 1960s.

    If you look at the south end of San Francisco Bay, it appears that a lot of it is used for salt evaporation. Really? Is salt sufficiently valuable to justify that use? I realize none of that property will ever be reclaimed, but it looks like there is around 36 square miles of land which could easily be reclaimed in an area where there would be tremendous demand for housing.

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