US housing boom gone, but prices still out of reach in California
The current slump in the housing market has done little to make Californian cities affordable.
from the March 12, 2007 edition
Page 3 of 4
Building more condos, fewer houses
In San Diego, one result is that new construction is increasingly dominated by condominiums and multifamily units, not the traditional single-family home. Those are what buyers can afford, and what zoning rules call for in a region of smog and sparse water supplies.
"The day of the ... house with the white picket fence, for at least this part of the state, is really over," says Robert Pinnegar, executive director of the San Diego County Apartment Association, a rental trade group.
Land here is limited in all directions: by the Mexican border to the south, the ocean to the west, the Marine base at Camp Pendleton to the north, and the Cleveland National Forest east of the city. In turn, high land prices make it hard for builders to finance affordable developments.
Townhouses here can cost $400,000 or more.
A low ownership rate
Such prices explain why just 57 percent of California households own homes – far below the national average of about 69 percent.
Those prices also explain why a growing share of San Diego workers now live outside the county, in some cases commuting more than 50 miles or living across the Mexican border.
"It's kind of impossible to stop" that migration, says Susan Baldwin, a senior regional planner at the San Diego Association of Governments.
But she and other local officials have been trying to craft solutions.
A new light-rail route, for example, will link the city of Oceanside, to the north of San Diego, with Escondido and other nearby communities. Stops along the route are candidates for new high-density housing, she says.
Nonprofit organizations are also stepping into the breach.
Wakeland Housing recently opened Lillian Place, a 74-unit development near San Diego's downtown baseball stadium, with rents about half the typical rates. Partnering with local governments and others, the company has helped create 6,000 units of affordable housing around the state.
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