By Murtaza Baxamusa
POSTED: 04/28/17, 9:50 AM PDT
For the second straight year, the California Legislature is considering cutting red tape for developers and builders in an effort to encourage construction of more housing. This approach suggests that the state’s affordable-housing crisis is entirely the result of too many regulations and too much public input inhibiting supply.
Not exactly.
A recent study analyzing industry and economic census data by Smart Cities Prevail (SCP) revealed that it takes 13 percent more workers to produce residential housing today than it did 20 years ago. And while construction profits have increased 50 percent more than the cost of labor or materials, inflation-adjusted wages for blue-collar construction workers have actually decreased by 25 percent.
As the saying goes, you get what you pay for. And by leading a race to the bottom for productivity and wages, the industry has helped create California’s housing crisis.
If we truly want to solve this problem, this dynamic needs to change.
There are more than a million Californians who work in construction. Yet many working Californians simply don’t make enough money to afford a roof over the head of their family.