"For generations it has been taken as a near article of faith across the country that ownership is both the financially and socially superior way to inhabit a home and that public policy makers should always promote it. California legislators and housing advocates spent this past year enacting sweeping policies aimed at making it easier to build housing of all kinds. This coming year, many of them indicate that they plan to focus specifically on providing more plentiful paths to homeownership."
"The state's homeownership rate of roughly 55% is second lowest in the nation, above New York, and a full 10 percentage points beneath the national average. Most of that gap, both common sense and researchers at UC Berkeley tell us, isn't the result of an atypical fondness for the freedoms of renting but comes down to the price tag. The median price of a detached single-family home across in the United States is $426,800. In California, it's $852,680. In San Francisco it's well over $1 million."
Homeownership is widely portrayed as a benchmark of success and a primary method for accumulating intergenerational wealth. California enacted broad policies to ease housing construction and plans to expand pathways to homeownership, but significant barriers remain. The state's homeownership rate is roughly 55%, the second-lowest nationwide and about ten percentage points below the national average. The gap is driven mainly by high housing prices: median U.S. detached single-family price $426,800, California $852,680, San Francisco well over $1 million. With borrowing rates above 6%, estimated monthly mortgage payments often range from $4,000 to $6,000, substantially exceeding typical rents.
Read at San Jose Inside
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