[quote=SK in CV]spdrun, are you arguing that increases in population don’t require additional housing?
I don’t think there’s any question that many areas were over-built for their current populations. The last real economic study I did (and got paid for!) almost 10 years ago predicted that same conclusion. That was 2004. But for at least 20 years, changes in sales of new homes v. existing moved almost identically. Through boom and bust. But for more than the last 4 years, new home sales have been roughly half of what would have been necessary for that track to continue. New home construction lingered at it’s lowest level in 50 years. For 4 years. It just rose in the last 90 days to the lowest levels reached 30 years ago. Yet population growth and more importantly, new household formation have continued.
There probably are still some areas that are over-built. More houses than are necessary. But not everywhere. And current construction levels, though a full third higher than the bottom of the trough, are still a third of the peak construction and would still require a 50% increase to get to average construction levels of the last 50 years.
You make some good points about the type of construction needed. I’m not a big fan of huge homes either. But that doesn’t mean that all new home construction is bad. Some of it is needed. People gotta live somewhere.[/quote]
Yes, SK, “people gotta live somewhere.” But the over-social-service-burdened, under-water-righted CA jurisdictions are not responsible for housing the potentially-incoming masses who are only seeking out *new* construction.
There are hundreds of rental vacancies and at least 5000 resales on the market right now in SD County. If you happen to find yourself “new in town,” go get yourself one!
I’ve always been of the mind that “if you build ’em, they will come” (the “they” usually meaning low-income families who currently need or will eventually need social services). IOW, residential building out in “bumblefuck” actually begets population influx of this sort.
Look at Stockton, Modesto and Temecula and surrounds. Do you actually believe that all of these hundreds of thousands (1M+?) of *newer* residents (who previously lived closer to the coast) would have flocked to these areas over the last 8-20 years had it not been for the “affordable” *new* construction available there?
What happened to the rental homes/apartments these buyers left behind? Did their exodus create more residential vacancies in CA’s urban counties?
Like you, I’ve seen the doubling and then tripling + of the population of SD County over the years. The “quality of life” here is NOT better than it was 10, 20 or 30+ years ago … it is MUCH WORSE. What used to be a “short commute” (=<10 miles) to work is now ridiculously long due to commuters from the outlying CFDs using the same freeways as closer-in residents do.
CA’s population redistribution resulting from CFD formation in (primarily) the last 25 years has done NOTHING for the quality of life of residents of existing communities. In fact, community services (now stretched thin, due to layoffs) are even scarcer for the older areas, due to having to “share” tree trimmers and street/sidewalk maintenance crews, for example, with the residents who live within the distant CFDs.
Another effect the MR CFD Act had on CA was a redistribution of its low and moderate-income families from established cities to what were once rural, outlying areas. In recent years, many of this population influx have found themselves in need of social services that these communities were never “set-up” to provide to anywhere NEAR this large of a population.
If the cheaper *new* construction in CA’s lizardland or farmland has lured in ANY out-of-state families at all (who otherwise would not have moved to CA, had it not been for “cheap” new construction), then those families were “borderline” on needing social services when they first moved into the state and are possibly eligible to collect some services now.
CA doesn’t NEED to be “attracting” this kind of “transplant” from out-of-state. We’re already FULL of “poor” people with their hands out, so much so that the state and counties neither have the personnel to properly handle these applications nor the funds to administer programs to more “needy” people.
AZ has more “water-rights” to the Colo River than SoCal does but I think those leaders in Maricopa County and the cities within it are screwing their own longtime constituencies by approving one subdivision after another. From a traveler’s point of view (who has been going back and forth thru there for 35+ years) it looks grossly overbuilt to me. When AZ officials find they are running out of natural resources (water?) and have a VERY large population in need of social services which they have neither the personnel nor the funds to provide, they are going to be in the same boat as CA and hurting very badly, indeed.
