Gavin Newsom has not solved California’s housing crisis. Three lessons for Kamala Harris

By Alexei Koseff (CALMATTERS) – For California political observers, the housing plan that Kamala Harris recently unveiled may have caused a twinge of familiarity. As a central plank of her agenda to “lower costs for American families,” the Democratic presidential nominee pledged in August to build 3 million additional affordable homes and rentals over the next four years to address “a serious housing shortage across America” — echoing Gov. Gavin Newsom’s platform during his first gubernatorial campaign in 2018, when he called for California to add 3.5 million housing units by 2025. Housing policy experts are enthusiastic about many of the ideas that Harris floated to promote production, which include creating a new tax incentive for developers who build starter homes for first-time homebuyers, expanding a tax incentive for affordable rental housing projects and establishing a $40 billion “innovation fund” to finance construction, as well as repurposing some federal land for housing and streamlining the permitting processes for projects. Michael Lens, a professor of urban planning and public policy at UCLA, called it a wonk’s wish list: “This is all of the stuff we talk about at dorky academic conferences.” But transforming the housing market from the top is difficult,...