Housing Crisis Hurting CA Climate Change Goals

The Bay Area’s housing crisis is undermining California’s ambitious and global-leading work to combat climate change. Bay Area Council Senior Vice President Matt Regan discussed the linkage between housing and greenhouse gas emissions at Climate Forward Bay Area: A Leadership Forum presented by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District on Oct. 13 in San Francisco.

Regan joined Alameda County Supervisor Scott Haggerty and Doug Johnson, Senior Land Use and Transportation Planner for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission for a discussion on “Technology and Transportation and Housing: Driving New Solutions.”

Regan told the audience that the Bay Area has added more than 600,000 new jobs since 2010, but has permitted only about 65,000 new housing units. That gap along with soaring demand has pushed housing prices and rents into the stratosphere and is forcing an increasing number of Bay Area workers to endure longer, polluting commutes from Sacramento and the San Joaquin Valley. The phenomenon is examined in a recent Bay Area Council Economic Institute report titled: Another Inconvenient Truth.