> "What these type of pieces never discuss is how much they think rents will be brought down by upzoning." [slighted edited for clarity] according to some qui

> "What these type of pieces never discuss is how much they think rents will be brought down by upzoning." [slighted edited for clarity] according to some quick and dirty searching, we build about 140,000 units per year in california and need another 110,000 to house the net increase in population. that means we need 250K units per year total. it now costs about $400K to build a unit of housing. so that means we need $100B of new housing per year in cali. incidentally, the gdp is about $3T and the annual state budget is about $200B. at that rate of building (250K units/year), you'd expect housing prices to stabilize. if you want prices to go down, you'd have to build more than that (hard to incentivize unless costs are brought down or subsidies are brought up). according to the census, even in metropolitan statistical areas, new residential construction is mostly (90+%) detached single family residences (SFRs). so if we upzone all SFRs (R-1 in LA) to two-family residences (R-2 in LA) and encouraged the building of 2-family structures, we'd expect housing prices to stabilize, at least in metro areas, where housing is at crisis levels. i think this was the reasoning behind california cities (like pasadena) experimenting with allowing in-law/accessory units (based on the quick calcs above). i would actually go even further and upzone to R-3 (as proposed by scott weiner in SB50 [0]), which would then allow fourplexes on what would only have a single home. fourplexes are nice because the massing (from the street) is about the same as a single family home, but it potentially quadruples density. then you'd actually see decreases in housing costs. i'd also encourage owner-occupied fourplexes to create more coherent neighborhoods, rather than corporate-controlled rentals that extract and deplete wealth from a neighborhood. [0] https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-single-family-zoning-changes-senate-bill-50-legislation-20190513-story.html https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-single-family-zon...