How Much Added Housing is Really Needed in California?

Published: 2018 | Dowell Myers, JungHo Park, and Janet Li | USC Sol Price School of Public Policy

Abstract

Realistically, how much housing do we actually need and how do we know that? In the past, USC planning scholars have carried out numerous estimates of housing needs in California using different methods. Currently our research team in the USC Price School of Public Policy is working in great detail on housing needs and dynamics in Los Angeles county, supported by the Haynes Foundation. But the candidates called out the statewide number that had been prepared by the McKinsey consulting firm a couple years earlier. Considering this, why not turn our methods toward the whole of California and see what we get?