Informing Housing Policy Debates With The Latest Research

New CLEE “working paper” housing literature review

Housing is in short supply in states like California, leading to massive inequality, economic hardship, population loss, and climate impacts, as more residents live farther from job centers in climate-risky areas that require long commutes.

Yet the debate around solutions to this problem, such as zoning and permitting reforms, are often colored by misinformation and a lack of evidence. To remedy that challenge, CLEE is today releasing an authoritative “working draft” literature review of housing research.

Housing, Land Use & Affordability: A Comprehensive Literature Review focuses on housing production and supply policies, with particular emphasis on policies that drive housing typology and location. In addition, the literature review addresses the synergies and tradeoffs between housing production policies and California’s climate mitigation, climate adaptation and resilience, and housing equity (i.e., affirmatively furthering fair housing) objectives.

This working paper supports an in-progress, California Air Resources Board-funded project entitled “Housing Solutions for Climate and Equity,” under contract with UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation and CLEE. The forthcoming final report will identify the key strategies needed to achieve California’s housing production, climate, and equity objectives in a coordinated fashion, along with sophisticated modeling by the Terner Center to determine their likely real-world impact.

As a disclaimer and as mentioned, this literature review is a work-in-progress and we would welcome feedback or suggestions of any studies missed by our team. And credit to former CLEE research fellow (and current PhD candidate at UC Berkeley Law’s Jurisprudence & Social Policy program) Elissa Walter for serving as the lead author on this review, along with our Terner Center colleagues.

As housing affordability and climate debates play out, we hope this literature review will be useful for advocates, policy makers and the general public in evaluating proposed solutions. And stay tuned for our final report identifying priority housing strategies for the state and modeling their impact.

housing policy