This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, September 21st, 2021.

I'm Caleb Brown.

In a state with high housing prices and rampant homelessness, California last week made a move to make it easier to build housing. and it's a great first step toward giving California some relief against the entirely man-made

constraints on housing construction.

California is well known for its housing problems.

Just the rate of homelessness alone should tell us something about

the trouble of acquiring and keeping housing for many Californians.

What have they done here with these two pieces of legislation?

Well, these are important. They'll do less than I think that are advertised, but they're really important in that they're kind of a breakthrough in the housing struggle in California. The most important one is

SB 9, which was just signed, and that would basically eliminate statutory single family zoning anywhere in the state.

It would require that you can build duplexes on any parcel property in the state, even those

that were previously zoned only for single family.

It would also allow if the plot of land is large enough to splitting the land, so theoretically

you could have up to four units where you only had one that was allowed before.

Okay, so that is a potential for a massive expansion of housing in California.

Houses could be split into multiple units.

Lots could be built up in a way that allows multiple units as well. What are the also continuing

to exist regulatory structures that might stymie those efforts.

Yeah, we may see a lot fewer units built than we had then anticipated because there's still a host of other

regulations in the way. For example, there's still a minimum lot sizes per unit that are listed.

You still have to have a certain setback from the streets. You still have to deal with the California

Sequo, the California Environmental Quality Act,

...