Solving California's Housing Crisis

California is in the grip of a housing crisis that has been decades in the making. Home prices have soared beyond the reach of working families, rents consume ever-larger shares of household income, and homelessness has become a defining challenge for cities across the state. The state’s 2022 housing plan set a goal of planning for 2.5 million homes during the eight-year housing-element cycle, including more than one million homes affordable to lower-income Californians.

The urgency is real. And yet, so is the anxiety felt by longtime residents who see their neighborhoods changing — sometimes overnight — in ways that feel imposed rather than organic. New construction that ignores scale, context, and community input doesn’t just alter skylines; it erodes trust in the planning process itself.

As someone who sits on the Los Angeles City Planning Commission and has spent my career in real estate development, I believe we can — and must — do both: build the housing California desperately needs while preserving the qualities that make our cities and neighborhoods worth living in.

The False Choice

Too often, the housing debate is framed as a binary: either you’re for building more housing or you’re for protecting neighborhoods. This is a false choice. The real question is not whether to build, but how and where to build thoughtfully.

Blanket upzoning without regard for local context can produce developments that clash with the built environment, overwhelm infrastructure, and generate justified pushback. But reflexive opposition to any new construction — the instinct to freeze a neighborhood in amber — restricts housing choices and makes it harder to accommodate new residents.

The path forward requires nuance, not slogans.

Smart Density in the Right Places

Not every block needs a high-rise, and not every corridor should remain single-family. The most effective housing strategies concentrate density where it makes the most sense:

• Transit corridors and major boulevards — Areas served by rail, bus rapid transit, and other high-capacity transit are natural candidates for increased density. Locating housing near transit can give residents more transportation choices and support transit ridership.

• Commercial zones and underutilized retail — Strip malls, aging office parks, and vacant commercial parcels can be transformed into mixed-use developments that add housing while activating street life.

• Infill sites and parking lots — Surface parking lots in urban cores represent underused land that may be suitable for housing, subject to site conditions and public review.

By directing growth to these areas, we can add significant housing capacity while limiting pressure on established residential streets and historic districts.

Design That Respects Context

Density alone is not the answer — design matters enormously. A well-designed six-story building on a transit corridor can feel like it belongs. A poorly designed three-story building on a residential street can feel like an intrusion.

Cities should invest in strong design guidelines that address:

• Scale and massing — New buildings should transition thoughtfully to adjacent lower-density areas, using setbacks, step-downs, and landscaping to soften the interface.

• Architectural character — Materials, fenestration patterns, and streetscape elements should respond to the surrounding context rather than default to generic, cost-driven templates.

• Public realm improvements — New development should contribute to better sidewalks, street trees, open space, and ground-floor activation that benefit existing residents as well as newcomers.

Good design is not a luxury — it is the mechanism through which density becomes an asset rather than a liability.

Community Engagement That Actually Works

One of the reasons neighborhood preservation and housing production are so often pitted against each other is that the engagement process itself is broken. Public hearings dominated by the loudest voices, held at inconvenient times, and structured around opposition rather than collaboration do not produce good outcomes for anyone.

We need engagement models that:

• Reach renters, younger residents, and non-English speakers — not just homeowners

• Happen early in the planning process, before projects are fully designed

• Focus on shared goals — affordability, walkability, green space, local retail — rather than yes-or-no votes on individual projects

• Use digital tools and multilingual outreach to broaden participation

When communities have a genuine voice in shaping growth, planners have better information and more opportunity to resolve concerns before final decisions.

Preserving What Matters

Neighborhood character is not just nostalgia. It encompasses the human-scale streetscapes, the mature tree canopy, the local businesses, the architectural heritage, and the social fabric that residents have built over generations. These qualities have real value — economic, cultural, and psychological.

But preservation cannot mean permanent exclusion. A neighborhood that prices out the teachers, nurses, restaurant workers, and young families who sustain it is not being preserved — it is being hollowed out. True preservation means ensuring that a neighborhood can evolve and welcome new residents while retaining the qualities that make it a place people care about.

The Stakes

California’s housing shortage is connected to housing-cost burdens, long commutes, homelessness, and displacement pressures. At the same time, poorly planned development that ignores community context breeds resentment and political backlash that slows down housing production.

We don’t have the luxury of choosing one priority over the other. We need leaders, planners, and developers who are willing to hold both truths at once: that California must build dramatically more housing, and that the way we build matters as much as how much we build.

From my seat on the Planning Commission and my experience in real estate, I’ve seen what happens when these values are treated as complementary rather than competing. In my experience, projects have the best chance of durable support when they take both seriously.

California’s future depends on getting this right.

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