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The 2014-2022 RHNA Cycle: <br /> A Catastrophic California Housing Policy Failure <br /> And Ideas for a Millennial Generation Response <br /> Over the past 50 years, California has vastly underperformed the US housing market <br /> with sky high housing prices making adequate housing an impossible goal for most <br /> middle class families of the millennial generation. See the tragic 50 year history of <br /> California vs. U.S. Housing Prices at Exhibit A. <br /> Over the last seven years, the California housing crunch has worsened considerably, <br /> with California housing prices rising 26% more than U.S. housing prices during that <br /> period. The 2014-2022 RHNA Cycle, the centerpiece of California's housing policy, is <br /> now in its final year. <br /> Despite starting in 2014 at a price level 50% higher than the U.S. median priced home <br /> ($412,820 CA vs. $275,200 US) California housing policy managed to drive the <br /> California median priced home up to about 76% higher than the median priced U.S. <br /> home during this RHNA Cycle ($765,580 CA vs. $433,100 U.S.). This RHNA Cycle has <br /> been a catastrophic failure. <br /> This article proposes and supports the hypothesis that California housing policy is failing <br /> to provide reasonable affordable housing because of increasing price and rent controls <br /> on new housing production as directed by RHNA policies. This article also suggests <br /> Housing Element policies which Pleasanton, or any city, could institute, consistent with <br /> State housing statutes, that would help bring housing prices back within reach of the <br /> next generation, our children. <br /> The Victims: Millennial Generation <br /> Among the most impacted victims of California's artificial housing inflation is the <br /> millennial generation, those born between 1981 and 2000. In the year 2000, I wrote an <br /> analysis of inclusionary rent controls, and their use as a tool of exclusionary zoning, <br /> concluding with the statement: "How ironic, and how just, that people who set out to <br /> enrich themselves at the expense of others, succeed primarily in impoverishing their <br /> own children." (Exhibit D at Bates p. 26) For those born between 1981 and 2000, that <br /> sad prediction has come true. <br /> 1 <br />