Project Summary
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, we 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. We will also conduct 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.
