A new USC study reveals that the challenges that led to a national shortage of affordable housing and soaring home prices were set in motion long ago – and could have been foreseen.
The researchers behind the study say that the problem will only worsen as more natural disasters – such as the devastating Los Angeles area wildfires and large hurricanes – flatten entire communities. Los Angeles County officials estimate that more than 10,000 homes and businesses have been lost so far to the fires that erupted across the region last week.
“A tightly constrained housing supply reduces resilience to absorb losses from unexpected disasters – fires, earthquakes, hurricanes and more. In Los Angeles, this lack of flexibility could rapidly intensify gentrification as relocations strain the existing housing stock,” said Dowell Myers, professor of policy, planning and demography at the USC Price School of Public Policy and the study’s corresponding author.
The study, published in the Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, traces the origins of the crisis back to the early 2000s. A perfect storm of policy missteps, demographic shifts and economic forces emerged that have severely constrained housing supply, disproportionately affecting millennials and people of color.
The nation now faces a shortage of 4.5 million or more homes.
