Recent state legislation has attempted to address California’s housing affordability crisis by encouraging new development in transit-accessible and/or jobs-rich areas. But policymakers lack adequate information in two key areas: the effects of transportation laws and plans on the decisions of developers regarding whether and where to build housing; and the determinants of delays in approvals for proposed projects in jobs-rich and transit-accessible areas. Drawing on a unique dataset detailing all residential projects of five units or more that were approved from 2014 through 2017 in seven Southern California jurisdictions, this project will analyze the extent to which transportation policies, rules, plans, and investments influence the location of new housing and delay the construction of new housing. Using descriptive statistics and multivariate modeling, the research team will examine developers’ decisions concerning whether and where to build housing, identifying how project-level attributes and contextual variables, including those related to transportation, affect decisions about whether and where to build infill projects in jobs-rich and transit-rich locations. This work will also include a systematic comparison of permitting timelines for otherwise comparable projects with different degrees of transit availability or job accessibility, along with multivariate modeling to assess the determinants of delay.

In recent decades, common-interest housing developments have become prevalent in many American cities. According to the Community Associations Institute’s 2021 estimates, nearly 30% of the U.S. population now lives in a development or area governed by a community association, with homeowners associations being the most common type. Despite the widespread presence of homeowners associations (HOAs), there has been limited research on how they impact the adoption of new mobility technologies, innovative urban neighborhood designs, and sustainable land use and transportation initiatives. HOAs and similar community governing bodies have the authority to impose additional restrictions on community activities, which has often led to them being perceived as obstacles to achieving a more environmentally friendly and inclusive future. While this perception is grounded in reality, it doesn’t fully account for the significant variation in how HOAs operate. This perspective also hinders innovative thinking about how HOAs could contribute to creating more sustainable communities. Exploring ways to engage these influential entities in pursuing various planning objectives is crucial.

This project will improve the collective understanding of how HOAs and other community associations impact sustainable land use and transportation. The researchers will achieve this by: i) creating an integrated geospatial database that includes information about HOAs, land uses (including Accessory Dwelling Units, or ADUs), and transportation indicators, ii) investigating the relationship between the presence or absence of HOAs and factors such as ADU construction, travel patterns, and the built environment, and iii) identifying best practices and extracting lessons from successful cases.