Since the mid-1990s, most new market-rate housing in California has been of the single-family detached (SFD) variety. Under traditional assumptions, these units should be generating school-age children at a predictable rate — because they would be occupied by families with a predictable number of children. But when single-family homes represent the only housing being built, those assumptions might go out the window. All types of households might occupy the new houses. And that r
Where do housing unit need projections come from? If you answered, "from population projections," you are only partly correct. The little-understood and unappreciated "headship rate" translates population projections into units. Small changes in headship rates could result in significant changes in housing need projections.
California's housing shortage is usually represented by the number of single-family detached and multi-family housing units and their relative affordability. This characterization leaves out other important factors, such as the range of household sizes and types, lifestyle and location preferences. Another missing element is household wealth that accumulates through home ownership and the influence of the mortgage interest income tax deduction on home-buying decisions (including purchasing a second hom
Planning is essentially the process of analyzing people and places, and nothing informs that process more than the decennial Census. This past summer, California's newspapers were filled with the first important round of Census 2000 data – detailed information about population and housing counts, age and race profiles, and household size. This is called the "SF1" data – the Summary File 1 data, derived from the "short form" filled out by Americans in April 2000.
