“I Would, If Only I Could” How Cities Can Use California’s Housing Element to Overcome Neighborhood Resistance to New Housing
Report
Paavo Monkkonen | Moira O'Neill | Christopher S. Elmendorf | Eric Biber
November 2024
The Housing Element Law requires cities to periodically adopt a state-approved plan, called a housing element, to accommodate the city’s share of regional housing need. We argue that housing elements have substantial and underexplored potential to help local officials overcome the pathologies of “normal” land use politics.
This report explains how California’s Housing Element Law can be used by city councils and planning departments that understand the need to remove local barriers to housing supply and access to opportunity, but find themselves constrained by neighborhood-level opposition to change.
