Meanwhile, developable land in the Southland continues to shrink. And residential projects slated for urban areas on old industrial and commercial sites — which could add significantly to the region’s housing stock — often take years to get underway.

In Orange County, where land costs $1 million to $2 million per acre and the need is particularly acute, 7,206 permits for homes and apartments were issued in 2005, compared with 12,400 in 2000, according to statistics from the Construction Industry Research Board.

One of the few Southland counties with significant developable land — Riverside County — issued a bounty of 34,000 permits for new homes and apartments last year, compared with 15,400 in 2000. But that number still falls far short of the need, housing experts say.

And then there are the spiraling land and construction costs.

“We used to think that $10,000 to $15,000 per unit for just dirt in Rancho Cucamonga and Ontario was a lot of money,” said Hunter Johnson, president of LINC Housing Corp., a Long Beach nonprofit that builds, renovates and preserves affordable homes. “Today, in many of these same Inland Empire neighborhoods, the cost for land can range from $35,000 to $50,000 per unit.”

Getting permits is difficult with not-in-my-backyard sentiment and government regulations that often are redundant, builders say. Also, fees required by local governments for schools, sewers and other infrastructure in new communities have doubled to between $50,000 and $70,000 per unit since 2002, said Randy Jackson, president of the Planning Center, a private urban-design firm in Costa Mesa.

Contributing to the shortage of moderately priced “workforce housing” are builders’ preference to construct more profitable “luxury” homes and buyer demand for upscale housing, industry analysts say.

In downtown areas, where major efforts are underway to increase high-density housing, many builders are converting historic buildings — which often housed apartments — into high-end condos, further eroding the low- to moderate-price housing inventory.

The bright spots

Builders are eager to point out that the picture is not all bleak, however, and that, in fact, strides have been made to provide housing at all price levels. Compared with the 72,000 total new housing units permitted in seven Southern California counties in 2000, there were 106,400 new homes approved in 2005, according to the research board.   Continue »

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