White Papers and Research Reports

I love finding the story in data and creating clear, concise and compelling research and white papers that make complex subjects easily digestible for a general audience.

I provide complete white paper conceptualization, research, writing, editing and infographic design services. In the sample below, a real estate industry group came to me with the opportunity to present a position paper to Governor Gavin Newsom on the state of housing in California and potential solutions. They provided some key issues that were important to include and initial research. I took it from there, coming up with the theme of “housing gridlock,” locating extensive supporting research, hiring and managing the graphic designer, working with her to design the infographic, and going through extensive edits from stakeholder members of the lobbying group. The position paper was presented to Governor Newsom and resulted in new policy being enacted as part of his 2020 California budget.

Excerpt from California housing policy position paper for industry lobbying group (full report available upon request):

Unlocking Housing Gridlock

Perspectives on Barriers and Policy Solutions to Help Reach
3.5 Million New Homes in California by 2025

California Building Industry Association

January 2020

Executive Summary

California’s housing today is in a state of gridlock, a traffic jam of unmet housing need brought on by years of a housing policy that does not support the needs of our people. We need a new roadmap for housing that will unlock the housing gridlock and get us from where we are today to the future we all envision for our state.

California is home to nearly 40 million people;[i] if it were its own country its diversified economy would be the fifth largest in the world;[ii] it is the home of innovation and imagination; and the California Dream is the ideal that people around the world aspire to every day. Yet for decades our quality of life has been eroding as we fail to keep up with supply for one of the most basic fundamental human needs: housing.

For the last decade, housing production has run short of projected needs by over 100,000 homes annually, even as California has added an average of 29,200 jobs a month over a 113-month job growth expansion.[iii] [iv]

·      Overall homeownership rates in California are at their lowest since the 1940s.[v]

·      Nearly 30% of California renters pay over half their household income toward rent and 17% of homeowners pay over half their household income toward their mortgage and other shelter costs.[vi][vii]

·      Impact and other infrastructure regulatory fees make up 20% of the cost of building a typical home in California—unfairly forcing onto new home buyers the cost for all of the impact for the infrastructure projects and services necessary to accommodate our state’s growth. We’re taxing new housing to pay for all housing.

·      We have a broken planning system where the plans and the realities are completely unaligned. At the rate new housing is approved and built today, it will be decades or even centuries before some California cities such as San Jose and Los Angeles reach their self-declared 2013 moderate-income housing goals.[viii]

·      The problem is even worse at lower income levels—Santa Clara and Irvine won’t reach their 2013 low-income housing goals for 300+ years or very low-income goals for 2,000+ years.[ix]

A major factor in what makes California such an exceptional place — one that people across the world aspire to be a part of — has been the quality of life that can be realized here. It attracts great people, amazing talent and industry-leading businesses. However, when people cannot achieve the quality of life they strive for here and begin to lose hope that they ever will, talent escapes to other regions. If the quality of life continues to erode significantly over time — with lack of housing supply and the housing affordability problem topping the list of concerns — California will lose its competitive edge and become a stagnated economy. It will become a place where only the richest can afford to live and all others are forced out.

It’s the California paradox: it’s the best state in the country in which to live—and the most difficult to build enough homes in which to live. California needs more homes that ordinary Californians—the backbone of our state and its economic future—can afford. We need a state that’s built for the future, rather than one in which many people, including both experienced professionals and the young people who are the next generation of innovation, are forced to migrate to other states due to the high cost of living.

Today, our housing policies and our housing goals are frequently in opposition. Public planning and growth are primarily controlled at the local level, by local politicians and existing homeowners who frequently benefit from slow or no-growth policy, so they have no incentive to be part of the solution. Constrained housing supply means that house prices rise, which is good for existing owners. Politicians that promote NIMBY policies are often applauded and re-elected. Many have come to accept these dynamics as an unchangeable status quo, but we believe that we have the opportunity to apply to this fundamental California need the same kind of innovative approaches that have launched some of the world’s leading companies and culture-changing inventions in our state.

In California, we create the direction the rest of the country tends to move toward. This is as true for housing as it is for technology or entertainment. We have a responsibility—and an opportunity—to change the conversation about housing policy from regulation to innovation in support of a stronger future for all Californians.

Our current situation is the result of not making a societal investment in housing over the past decades. We believe that increasing the housing stock is a form of infrastructure investment, comparable to highway construction, school improvement or job growth. Alleviating the stress on the housing system in California would contribute meaningfully to social sustainability in our state, not only directly for the buyers of those homes, but for all of California’s citizens.

The Governor has called for a “Marshall Plan for affordable housing” in California with the goal of adding 3.5 million new homes to the housing supply by 2025. The California Building Industry Association supports the Governor’s vision. As the men and women striving to build those homes every day, we also have a unique perspective to share on the barriers in the current system that we believe block this shared goal.

We believe the most promising potential solutions will be based on five overarching principles:

·      A Problem of this Scale Demands Holistic Solutions: We will not get there by continuing to create a maze of regulations, one-off fees, incremental “improvements,” and policies that serve special-interest needs. This approach has added up to a well-intentioned roadblock against new housing. We need a holistic, systemic approach to a problem of this complexity and scale that sees all the parts in the system at all levels — state, regional and local — and creates a shared vision for the future of California housing, from the state to the local level.

·      Release Pressure Across the Entire Housing System: As systemic issues have remained unaddressed over decades, the problem has spread from the cities throughout the state and from the cost of homeownership to the rent and housing costs of virtually every Californian. We need to release the pressure across the spectrum of the housing system — from rentals to homeownership and from urban centers to smarter suburban expansion. No one solution will fix a problem of this size and scope, nor will it work to only focus on one area of need. SB-330, The Housing Crisis Act of 2019, and AB-101, a trailer bill addressing housing and homelessness, both of which Governor Newsom recently signed into law, reduce or eliminate a number of the inefficiencies in the housing planning and approval processes and enact common-sense reforms, but we need to build on these important first steps.

·      For Supply to Go Up, Fees Need to Come Down: We have identified a common theme across our analysis of today’s housing system in California: policies, fees and requirements enacted with the best of intentions but in isolation from a holistic understanding of their net negative impact on housing affordability and availability across our state. The impact and other regulatory fees levied on new housing and used to fund communitywide infrastructure projects and services are financially “locking up” land that could be used to increase the housing supply. It’s time to make a societal investment in new housing by finding new and innovative ways to support communitywide infrastructure projects and services rather than disproportionately taxing new homes and new home buyers. We should build on the work begun by SB-330 and AB-101 and enact similar comprehensive reform to undo decades of fee-based housing policy.  

·      Let’s Incentivize the Action We Want to See: We need to do a better job of aligning incentives for local governments with the results we want to see. We need the system to create reasons for everyone to align behind the goal of solving the housing gridlock. Specifically we need policy that incentivizes local politicians to make pro-housing decisions for the good of the entire state and which shift the dynamic away from primarily localized slow or no growth policies. We need smarter carrots, not bigger sticks. Sticks alone will not get us to solutions. Again, SB-330 and AB-101 establish an important foundation, but, given that the Legislative Analyst’s office estimates we are on pace to permit fewer than 100,000 units statewide in 2019, we need much more aggressive and comprehensive action to achieve the goal of 3.5 million new units by 2025.

·      Innovation Not Regulation: Let’s build on our strengths as a state. We are the home to some of the most creative, innovative thinkers in the world, from Silicon Valley to Hollywood to Sacramento. Let’s put our collective minds to work on how to “disrupt” our thinking about housing in our state, the way that Californians have reinvented so many aspects of our lives. Let’s completely reimagine the system.

In this report, we identify the key roadblocks impeding housing supply and some specific paths forward to begin to unlock the gridlock in California housing policy and reform a housing system that is making Californians poor.

Full report available upon request.