The Southern California News Group’s annual housing permit report card is out—and the news isn’t great. The third annual report exhibits a deficit when it comes to meeting affordable housing goals across the Golden State.
In fact, just 20 jurisdictions (out of 538 with housing mandates) are on track to meet their affordable goals.
Let’s start with the good news: San Bernardino received the highest rating of an A+, the only SoCal region to rank at the top of the list. Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties also performed well, with B+ and B scores, respectively.
It’s generally downhill from there in Southern California.
Orange County received a C- while Los Angeles County received a D, though some cities within those areas, including Costa Mesa, Santa Ana and Santa Monica all picked up A’s in the report.
San Diego County also received a D, while San Diego city proper received a C-.
According to the O.C. Register, to meet state goals, cities and counties would have needed to permit roughly 145,000 new homes last year, with 17 percent designated for affordable to medium-income buyers and renters, while the remaining should have been split about evenly between higher and lower affordability. However, cities and counties reported issuing only 109,000 housing permits last year, with about 11 percent of those units were moderately priced and 16 percent for lower-income residents.
The worse counties in the state were all in NorCal, where Calaveras, Nevada, Sierra, Lassen and Lake Counties all received F grades.