Developer Ginger Hitzke, president of of Hitzke Development Corp., in front of her affordable housing development, Autumn Terrace in San Marcos, Calif. Hitzke has been trying to get a 10-unit affordable housing project built by the beach in Solana Beach for the last 10 years and has yet to break ground.
At a time when California desperately needs more homes for its most vulnerable residents, the state still lacks a coherent strategy to get the most out of the dollars reserved for that purpose, and it still stymies affordable housing production with bureaucracy and red tape. Even worse, its failure to set priorities and properly oversee funding caused the state to lose out on $2.7 billion that could have gone toward affordable housing.
Those are the findings of a report released this week by State Auditor Elaine Howle. And they are deeply frustrating, particularly because it isn’t a new problem. State leaders have known for years that affordable housing developers are forced to navigate cumbersome rules to get funding and permits. All that additional work just delays much-needed projects and makes them more expensive to build. How expensive? A Times analysis earlier this year found the average cost to […]
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