University of California Institute of Transportation Studies

Recent state legislation addresses California’s housing affordability crisis by encouraging new development in transitaccessible and/or jobs-rich areas. But policymakers lack key information about the effects of laws and plans on developers’ decisions about whether and where to build housing, and factors contributing to delays in receiving government development approvals in target areas. Drawing on a unique dataset detailing all residential projects of five units or more that were approved from 2014 through 2017 in selected California jurisdictions, this project analyzes how project attributes and transportation-related factors affected infill housing construction. We find that in cities with extensive transit infrastructure, new projects were generally located in parts of the city with high proximity to transit, but that proximity to rail stops or high frequency bus stops was not associated with extreme delays in project approval compared to all projects in general. The only factors related to extreme delay are the percentage of land within a half mile radius of dedicated single-family housing and whether a multiunit project required a rezoning or general plan amendment, the latter of which is associated with 326% increase in the odds of a project being extremely delayed. Our findings suggest that cities could expedite transit-accessible housing development by ensuring that general plans and zoning accommodate multifamily development near transit.