Priced out: Can high-density housing solve the affordability crisis? (#AffordableCA)

**This event has reached capacity. Join us here on Wednesday, August 26 for the Livestream.**

Can a city built on the single family home as a sign of success and achievement accept density? Only 30 percent of households earning the state’s median income — $61,000 a year — can now afford to buy a home. The disparity is greater in major cities. Fewer than 20 percent of median-income households can buy in San Francisco, where the median home price is $980,000. More and more, Californians find themselves trapped amid high prices, a shortage of inventory, rising populations around job centers, and opposition to new development. In California’s major metro areas, a growing, mostly young workforce is priced out of the housing market and forced to dedicate greater portions of income to rent or face long commutes from less-expensive communities. Aversion to density and lack of new residential development creates a market without adequate growth where demand outstrips housing supply and will for the foreseeable future. What can state and community leaders do to overcome the aversion to high-density development and increase access to affordable housing while keeping neighborhoods whole?

Join KPCC and the Milken Institute as they take on these questions and search for solutions that make sense in our ever evolving culture and society.

Moderator:  

Josie Huang, KPCC reporter covering housing (@josie_huang)

Guests: 

Dana Cuff: Professor of Architecture/Urban Design and Urban Planning at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs; Director of UCLA’s cityLAB. Her work focuses on affordable housing, modernism, suburban studies, the politics of place, and the spatial implications of new computer technologies. She founded cityLAB in 2006, and has since concentrated her efforts around issues of the emerging metropolis. (@danacuff)

Ed DeMarco: Senior Fellow in Residence at the Milken Institute Center for Financial Markets and a Visiting Professor in the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University. From September 2009 to January 2014 he served as Acting Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), the conservator for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and regulator of those companies and the Federal Home Loan Banks. (@MilkenInstitute)

Larry Gross:  Executive Director of the Coalition for Economic Survival, a community-based organization that works to ensure tenants' rights and preserve affordable housing in the greater Los Angeles area. (@la_ces)

William K. Huang: Director of Housing for the City of Pasadena; former Acting Executive Director and Housing Director of the Community Development Commission of the County of Los Angeles, responsible for the County’s affordable housing & homeless programs, redevelopment, housing authority and community development activities.

Jeff Schaffer: Vice President and Southern California market leader at Enterprise Community Partners, where he oversees Enterprise’s programs advancing the development of affordable housing in Southern California. (@EnterpriseNow) 

@KPCCforum
@MilkenInstitute (Ed DeMarco, Milken Institute)
@josie_huang (Josie Huang, KPCC)
@danacuff (Dana Cuff, UCLA)
@la_ces (Larry Gross, Coalition for Economic Survival)
@EnterpriseNow (Jeff Schaffer, Enterprise Community Partners)
#AffordableCA

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This program is the second in our series, “Rescuing the California Dream: Policies for an Affordable Future.” The series is co-presented by KPCC/Southern California Public Radio and the Milken Institute.