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California needs at least 2.5 million new homes by 2030, but most cities are still falling short. A new study examines whether this shortfall is associated with the politics of who lives in these cities, and how those politics determine local governance.
In “Why Cities Resist New Housing: NIMBYism, Institutions, and Permitting Relative to Need,” researchers Robert W. Wassmer and Shoshana F. Levy analyzed eight years of permitting records from 478 California cities to uncover which resident traits and government structures are associated with more housing growth.
Key Takeaways:
- Housing Delays. Each additional 100 days a city takes to submit an approved housing plan to the state results in that city issuing 3.7% fewer permits for very-low-income housing, and 2.3% fewer total permits overall, over the 2015–2024 study period.
- Age Divide. Every 1% increase in a city’s population above age 55 is linked to about 3% fewer very-low-income permits. In contrast, each 1% increase in the population aged 25-34 is linked to 7% more very-low-income permits.
- Charter Advantage. Charter cities (which set their own local government rules) issued about 80% more very-low-income permits and 90% more low-income permits than comparable “General Law” cities of similar size, population, and wealth that default to state rules.
The researchers analyze permitting records from 478 California cities across the state’s most recently completed eight-year cycle, which ran from 2015 to 2024, using a statistical method built for data skewed toward zero, since most cities issue few permits while a handful issue thousands. The model controls for each city’s population, land area, local economy, and housing stock, letting researchers isolate the separate effects of demographics, governance, and approval processes. Because the design is correlational, it cannot prove causation.
Slow-Walking Housing Elements Come at a Cost. The longer a city takes to get its Housing Element approved (the section of its general plan that identifies feasible sites for its assigned housing), the fewer of those homes tend to get permitted. Approval isn’t automatic: the state can reject a Housing Element for inadequate sites, missing fair-housing analysis, incomplete data, or other factors, sending the city back to revise and resubmit until it passes. That back-and-forth can drag on for years. The average city takes 2,088 days, about 5.7 years. Each 100-day delay in approval is linked to a 3.7% drop in very-low-income permits and a 2.3% drop in total permits. Roughly 1 in 10 cities never got Housing Element approval during the entire 2015–2024 cycle. For those cities, the model associates about 1,000 fewer total permits, 57% below what their size and economy would otherwise support.
Age and Tenure Shape Permitting. A city with a 1% higher share of residents 55 and older in 2010, compared to an otherwise similar city, is predicted to issue roughly 3% fewer very-low-income permits, 4% fewer low-income permits, and 5% fewer moderate-income permits between 2015 and 2024. A 1% higher share of long-tenured residents, those who’d lived there since before 2000, told a narrower story, predicting about 2% fewer moderate, above-moderate, and total permits over the same period. The authors read both through the “Neighborhood Defender” lens: people who’ve put down roots resist changes to a neighborhood they’ve invested in. Homeownership tells a different story, though. Cities with more homeowners permitted more housing, holding other factors constant. Youth flipped the pattern entirely. A 1% higher share of residents aged 25 to 34 in 2010 predicted 14% more total permits and 7% more low-income housing permits over the study period. The authors call this a more YIMBY perspective: people who don’t yet own a home but hope to are simply more open to new construction going up around them.
Charter Cities Out-Build the Rest. Charter cities issue about 80% more very-low-income permits and 90% more low-income permits over the study period than cities under the state’s default “General Law” structure, even after accounting for city size, population, and local economy. However, the effect disappears for moderate-income housing. The authors offer two speculative explanations for why charter cities tend to permit more: charters grant cities broader authority to set their own land-use rules, and most charter cities have a mayor with more standalone authority than General Law cities allow, possibly offsetting council members who favor building somewhere, just not in their own district.
Two changes follow from the data: state regulators could enforce firmer deadlines for Housing Element approval, since longer delays are consistently linked to fewer permits. Cities weighing governance reform may also note that charter cities with a mayor-council structure are linked to meaningfully more housing than the state’s default council-only system.
Slow permitting bureaucracy and governance structures both measurably affect how much housing gets built, and unlike who lives in a city, both are things state and local officials can actually change.
Photo by Deane Bayas via Pexels
