Carol Lloyd discusses the issues surrounding building housing in the Bay Area in this week’s Surreal Estate,

The real issue, of course, is that cities don’t actually build housing — developers do. That means cities need to incentivize builders to fulfill their plans, which is easier said than done when it comes to low-income housing. “In the end, there’s not that much money for low-income housing,” Schwob explained. “We can make land available, but building affordable housing is very expensive.”

But I know one planner-turned-developer who still feels cities could take their legal obligation to the housing element more seriously. He regards many of the government promises about new housing as so much hot air. “It’s all BS,” he told me, adding that recently a San Francisco city planner told him the city is meeting only 40 percent of its current needs. “Hardly any of the cities actually fulfill their plan.” [more...]

The inefficient ‘housing element’ is better than nothing when it comes to creating affordable housing [SFGate]

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