Housing Crisis

California community land trusts – which buy land and sell or rent the buildings on it to low-income residents— have tripled.

California's initiative process casts voters as judges of political policy issues. Sometimes they're parsing competing measures on the same topic.

As California struggles to address its housing shortage, the sky-high costs of housing projects minimize the bang for its bucks.

High rents and home prices are affecting young adults’ futures. That’s why young voters, especially Blacks and Latinos, say housing and homelessness are the key issues this election cycle.

Playa Vista, a West LA community that took decades to build, is an extraordinary accomplishment in a city where housing is notoriously difficult to create. Yet one piece remains: the wetlands restoration. It's being blocked, paradoxically, by environmentalists.

By deciding that unsheltered people have no constitutional protection to camp on public property, the divided Supreme Court reflects the political polarization around homelessness — where everyone is correct depending on which side of the glass they choose to look through. What if the legal, moral and policy choice was different?

In recent years, California lawmakers have targeted coastal protections that impede housing, leading to heated debate in the Capitol and elsewhere. A former attorney for the Coastal Commission says California's landmark Coastal Act has failed to deliver on what it envisioned.

Efforts to weaken California's coastal protections and ease housing development have generated fierce debate. It's created a false choice, argues the Santa Cruz mayor.

The California Association of Realtors agrees not to oppose a constitutional amendment to reduce the voter approval threshold for housing bonds. In exchange, the measure will not apply to single-family homes. Some housing advocates are angry about the carve-out.

What if California "prescribed" housing to homeless people? As the state seeks a Medicaid waiver to help unhoused patients find and pay for housing, writing a prescription for housing could soon be possible.