1,000,000 New Homes? What Does That Actually Mean?

As of this week, Eric Swalwell has officially dropped out of the California governor’s race. While that gives Tom Steyer a bit of momentum, this race is far from decided. There is still a lot of runway, and locally, you could definitely make the case that Matt Mahan could push up the polls in the coming months.

But focusing on Steyer for the moment, one of his biggest campaign ideas is building one million homes. Yeah, a million. That is a massive number. The general approach is to push development, streamline permits, limit corporate home buying, and set some pretty aggressive building targets.

In theory, that could help with affordability, especially around here. But realistically, most of that housing is going to come in the form of condos, townhomes, and apartments. There just is not enough land in the Bay Area to suddenly scale up single-family housing in a big way. It is just the math. There's already so much sprawl in the South Bay; concentrating housing in more urban areas might be a great idea. More population density tends to bring cool stuff, like bustling downtowns. 

Honestly, this is not all that new. The state is already moving in this direction. With the Regional Housing Needs Assessment, Bay Area cities are expected to add roughly 500,000 homes by 2030, anyway. Policies like SB 79 are also pushing for more housing near transit, even if it means overriding some local zoning rules. Getting that many homes built will need some streamlining, just a matter of what we are sacrificing. 

That is where someone like Mahan stands out, in my opinion. It's not just about hitting big housing numbers. It is about how you actually implement that growth at the local level. Making sure infrastructure keeps up, neighborhoods stay livable, and development is done thoughtfully.

At the end of the day, no matter who wins, we're probably heading toward more density. The real question is how it's handled.

Curious what you think. Always open to hearing different perspectives.

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