Beverly Hills, Affordable Housing Mecca?

BEVERLY HILLS, CA – Beverly Hills is on the list of cities that will be subject to Gov. Jerry Brown's Office of Housing and Community Development new streamlining law that will force places to approve new housing, especially low-income housing, by removing city government's ability to block certain building permits, New York Times reports.

Almost all California cities, especially those in metropolitan areas – think San Francisco, San Diego, and Los Angeles – haven't built nearly as much low and moderately priced housing as they were supposed to. Shocker, right? California is in a housing crisis with some of the highest real estate costs in the country, according to New York Times.

Even more surprising, Beverly Hills was the city that topped many short lists of places that are meeting their goal of affordable housing, but New York Times credits this to politics and "funny math."

The progress report released last week is based on various housing goals that are decided by a regional body of governments, according to New York Times. Beverly Hills was required to build a total of three housing units: one very-low income housing unit, one low-income housing unit, and one moderately priced housing unit over the eight-year period covered by the goals. Beverly Hills exceeded its numbers on a percentage basis, by issuing permits for a total of nine low- and moderate-income housing units.

Since Beverly Hills already has a plethora of high-income housing units, they weren't required to build any more. Nevertheless, the city issued 75 new permits for high-income housing.

Scott Wiener, the San Francisco senator, wrote the streamlining bill that the recent report was based on. Wiener said in an interview that numbers like those reported by Beverly Hills are why he's working on a new bill to try to neutralize the role of politics in housing production; he wants to tie future state housing goals to economic measures like job growth, New York Times said.

“It’s absurd and we see this around the state where communities that are whiter and more affluent are able to push down their numbers and essentially opt out of new housing,” he said to New York Times.

Read more at New York Times

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