As California Democrats attempt to “Trump-proof” the state and Republicans celebrate their party’s sweeping victory, the mood among some of the state’s most prominent housing advocates is glum.
“Trump’s extremist economic agenda is going to tank the housing market and housing construction,” Sen. Scott Wiener, one of the Legislature’s loudest YIMBY voices, said in an interview Friday.
That concern is based largely on actions taken during President-elect Donald Trump’s first presidency and his stated plans to deport massive numbers of immigrants and raise tariffs. Trump has offered few specific housing policy proposals. When CalMatters reached out to his campaign for more details, it didn’t get a response.
That’s left housing experts, elected officials and journalists reading the tea leaves of his public statements, moves made by his first administration, and the ideas put forward by his former housing secretary, Ben Carson, in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 blueprint.
If those are any indication, a Trump presidency will likely make it harder for immigrants, including mixed-status households, and other low-income Californians to access subsidized housing. It could also complicate efforts to build housing in the state that’s specifically designated as affordable.
At the same time, experts said, Trump could help ease regulations for housing construction across the board, something sought by pro-housing officials in both parties. And some said Trump’s mentions of housing on the campaign trail, however vague, signal bipartisan agreement on the need to do something about housing affordability, at least when it comes to single-family homeownership. In other words, the rest of the country is catching up to California, where more than 3 in 4 adults say the cost of housing is “a big problem.”
Many of the most important housing policy decisions take place at the state and local level, placing some constraints on Trump’s influence. Here are a few ways an incoming Trump administration could affect housing in California.
Mass deportations
As with most other issues affecting the country, Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance have blamed immigrants for the housing crisis, arguing that deporting them will help free up homes for U.S. citizens. He’s also promised to ban mortgages for undocumented immigrants, who make up a tiny portion of the homebuying market, accounting for about 5,000 of the more than 4 million mortgages originated in 2023, the Urban Institute estimates.
Besides the human cost to families in California, a state where nearly half of all children have at least one immigrant parent, mass deportations would mean fewer workers to build new homes, said Ben Metcalf, managing director of the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley.
“If he’s going to go full bore on deporting everyone who’s not a citizen or green card holder, that is going to gut a construction workforce that is already aging and dwindling,” he said.
Perspectives on the state’s construction worker shortage vary; Chris Hannan, president of the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California, said that a slowdown in office construction means there are plenty of skilled tradespeople available to build new housing. But California’s construction industry employs more than 200,000 undocumented workers, or about a quarter of the workforce, according to the Migration Policy Institute, meaning their absence would significantly disrupt the industry.
Reducing the population also does not automatically make housing cheaper, at least in some parts of the state. New research from the Public Policy Institute of California finds that in some counties, rents have risen since 2010 even as vacancy rates also rose, with developers focusing on building for higher-income renters and charging more for newer units to recoup construction costs.
Taxing imports
Tariffs on construction materials would likely depress housing construction in California and elsewhere as companies are forced to pay the extra taxes on imported products, experts said.
Hannan pointed to the supply chain problems during the COVID-19 pandemic that drove up material prices. “The costs went through the roof,” he said. “There were (residential) projects that were delayed and projects that did not move forward.”
During the first Trump administration, the California Building Industry Association told the Sacramento Bee that tariffs enacted during the president’s first two years in office had driven up the cost of the average new home by $20,000 to $30,000.
Trump this year suggested he might impose 20% tariffs on imports across the board, and 60% on those from China.
Business leaders said Trump’s unpredictability makes it difficult to plan for potential future tariffs. “If Trump did nothing and let the (Federal Reserve) continue lowering interest rates and didn’t enact wild tariffs, things would improve for housing construction,” said Elaina Houser, vice president of policy for the Los Angeles Business Council. But a more interventionist President Trump could lead to more instability in the housing market, she said.
“Somebody says the wrong thing to him from another country and he says ‘I’m going to get back at you with tariffs’ — I can see that happening,” she said.
Easing regulations
Assemblymember Joe Patterson says he hopes a Trump administration will keep the promise in the Republican Party’s 2024 platform to “cut unnecessary regulations that raise housing costs.” The Rocklin Republican, who serves as vice-chair of the Assembly Housing Committee, pointed to an affordable apartment complex in his district that he said went through a costly and time-consuming environmental review when developers wanted to add four more units per acre to the site footprint.
Trump could use the power of the federal purse to reward states that speed up approval of new developments, he said.
“The two things that impact the price of housing is the cost of land…and the time and money to get through the approval process,” he said, referring to Trump’s plans to both loosen regulations and build housing on federal land. “I think if Trump can focus on those two things the market can take care of the rest.”
A Trump administration could also work with Congress to loosen HUD rules governing manufacturing of mobile homes, making more of that cheaper, entry-level housing available, said Alex Horowitz, housing policy initiative director for the Pew Charitable Trusts.
Restricting access to public housing
If past is prologue, low-income Californians who rely on federal housing assistance will be at risk under a second Trump administration.
During Trump’s first term, his administration floated a ban on federal housing assistance to families with any undocumented members — including those with U.S. citizen children. The rule, never implemented, would have broken with current policy allowing mixed-status families to receive pro-rated assistance based on the number of family members who are eligible.
If the federal government were to enact a similar rule today, “there’s a large number of households in California that would be impacted — mixed status families who would have to make that hard choice of separating as a family or leaving their housing and quite possibly not being able to find an alternative,” said Chione Flegal, executive director of Housing California, an affordable housing advocacy group.
Project 2025, the conservative blueprint for a second Trump administration, also envisions a thorough overhaul of the Department of Housing and Urban Development that would add time limits and increase work requirements for housing benefits, sell off land owned by public housing authorities, and transfer some of the department’s responsibilities to state and local governments.
Reducing the number of Californians eligible for federal housing vouchers could compromise new affordable housing projects because some developers rely on income from voucher-holders to make projects pencil out, Flegal said.
State leaders could choose to make up some of the funding for housing vouchers, she said, or finance affordable housing projects that wouldn’t be bound by the federal rules, though that would be “incredibly expensive.”
Prioritizing single-family zoning
Trump has railed that Democrats want to “abolish the suburbs,” co-authoring a 2020 Wall Street Journal op-ed with Carson that criticized elected officials in several states, including California, for promoting higher-density housing in residential neighborhoods.
“People fight all of their lives to get into the suburbs and have a beautiful home,” he said in a speech that year. “There will be no more low-income housing forced into the suburbs.”
California lawmakers in recent years have taken the opposite tack, making it easier for homeowners to build ADUs in their backyards and split their lots into two. “Creating more flexibility in zoning is essential to getting housing costs under control and addressing the housing shortage,” said Wiener.
It’s unclear, however, whether Trump would have much ability to influence zoning in California, beyond dangling federal grants as incentives. “The federal government has a limited impact on regulating housing requirements in California or any other state,” Morgan Morales, a spokesperson for the California Building Industry Association.
Help for first-time homebuyers
The Republican platform promises to “promote homeownership through tax incentives and support for first-time buyers,” help that could theoretically make a difference for California, where the median home price topped $900,000 this year and the age at which the majority of residents become homeowners is 49.
Unlike Vice President Kamala Harris, who said on the campaign trail that she’d give first-time homebuyers up to $25,000 in downpayment assistance, Trump has not offered any specifics. His spokespeople didn’t respond to requests for details.
The president-elect has said he would lower mortgage rates, something presidents don’t directly control. Mortgage rates rose after the election on the expectation that Trump’s economic policies will fuel inflation. Some of the changes contemplated in Project 2025, such as increasing mortgage insurance premiums and decreasing lengths of loans offered by the Federal Housing Administration, would likely make buying more expensive for first-time homebuyers.
The fact that both parties highlighted homeownership in their campaigns could provide some opportunity for collaboration on the issue at the federal level, said Adam Briones. He’s the CEO of California Community Builders, which promotes homeownership for middle-income Caifornians and those from historically marginalized communities. Briones said that the federal government lacks a large-scale program to build income-restricted affordable housing for homebuyers, the way it does for rental housing through tax credits.
“We are obviously a very divided nation,” he said. “We’re divided politically, racially, along gender and religious lines. The one thing that still seems to unite Americans is most folks want to buy a home. What can we do to use this general desire for American homeownership to potentially bring people together?”
Building housing on federal land
Trump has said he’ll open some federal land to housing construction, an idea with broad appeal that both candidates pushed on the campaign trail.
He’s suggested he would hold a contest to design and build new “Freedom Cities” on federal territory. “Trump Freedom Cities and Homes will sell like hot cakes and everyone will want to live in one!” effused Bill Pulte, a private equity CEO and real estate heir rumored to be under consideration for Trump’s Housing Secretary, this week on X.
Much of the federal land in California is in rugged terrain inhospitable to development or far from population centers, housing researchers said. But a recent Terner Center report found that the United States Postal Service owns more than 50 sites in California that could be suitable for housing construction due to their location in residential areas close to public transportation and other neighborhood amenities.
“I would think this would be an easy win for Trump if he wants to do something visible,” said Metcalf, the Terner Center director. “He likes to build things, he likes building walls. So maybe he can take some federal land and build some housing.”
Felicia Mello is a reporter with CalMatters.
Yes, its quite possible more fence jumpers will flock here for protection. They will all need a place to live, furthering the housing shortage & driving prices ever higher.
Grasping at straws as you circle the bowl.
Beautiful.
California has been making this “housing crisis” since the song “Little Boxes” came out and housewives started parroting the term “Urban Sprawl” like they know something at cocktail parties. NIMBYism is as Boomer as free love, and you, Boomerific of all the states, did this to yourselves. No Trump freebies for you Weiner et al.
@SJ KULAK, Real NIMBYism, stretching even if using growth control as an example, began officially in 1972 (yes, first in California), in Petaluma. The Boomers were ages 8 to 26 then, and those younger ones were probably a fraction of those in the expanding suburbs that could feature starter homes then that sparked interest in growth control and a folk song even though most buyers, as with earlier homes, were older. It’s too easy sometimes to confuse the Boomers (for whom you have a Thing) with their predecessors and too easy to say NIMBY when that is routinely untrue, as the concerns are real. Eyesores now, worse later cheap generic mid-rise hamster housing blocks (often deliberately built without enough parking) closer in (in the developed “coastal areas” as LAO puts it) are a real concern. So are lack of parking and of course upgrading streets and highways for population and population density increases. (Not everyone walks, cycles, or uses transit.) Only a much smaller group, primarily environmentalists, as usual now rails against exurban development and the commuter shed expanding in as much as into the (re)discovered northern San Joaquin Valley, resulting in “massive” evil VMT to and from tech jobs in the South Bay, that was well-established 40 years ago. (And the fuel and other vehicle costs, and loss of time and life, and the rest, as usual, and more emissions, not unnoticed) Incidentally, Gilroy to Hollister and everything in that area that isn’t already being developed is there for home building, plenty of houses and decent apartments, too, though there’s no guarantee of affordability of any of it there, either. The last has long needed public involvement, meaning subsidies or full-government housing. (Using CEQA funds for emissions reduction as other funds than HCD’s? Government often is inept about this or is more avoidant than even cynics believe. It’s a local and state issue, so where’s Newsom where needed?)
The state has been in decline for decades now, before and after peak Boomer peak years. It’s looking only to be much worse later at this rate of decline and successive generational declines. That’s not counting things like the Hayward or San Andreas Faults slipping big in coming years.
“Little Boxes” – 1964
“Urban Sprawl” – 1941
Boomers don’t invent anything; they misappropriate it and scale it for their interests after they directly benefitted from time before its invention.
NIMBYism is valid if you hold a comprehensive conservative view and pay the price for holding to it; but you can’t virtue signal reactionary political concepts at the potluck – makes you like a baddie. It turns into dissembling when the intention is to hold on to your property value, the highest of all the “Boomer Values”, while pushing every nonsensical progressive value to signal your virtue to your friends or your image in the mirror.
“Ohhh muh shade, ohhh muh character, ohhh muh congestion engineering, ohhh muh welcoming community, ohhh muh carbon”
I have no Thing for Boomers. Boomers have destroyed all the chains that would have kept me locked into a BS job for life. Boomers dismantled the company loyalty myth and replaced it with stock options, which I used to buy real property, which boomers converted into an asset from a commodity/public utility. Boomers fancy themselves global citizens and make capital far easier to move internationally (resulting in significant domestic and global socioeconomic disruption), something that not only made my career but has afforded me ability to buy and run my international businesses and hold bank accounts from my little laptop here.
Thank you, Boomers! Thank you, Boomers! Thank you, Boomers!
Its Boomers who hate what they created and have squandered their birthright of a simple stable life of a single income household, job for life, pensions and affordable healthcare, a cheap house with two car garage, wide and plentiful roads, and chicken in every pot. It’s as if they are voting for the Civil Rights Act every time they step into the booth, because “they” know how racist America is, because they saw King get shot or some Governor in front of a school. Please. It’s the Boomers who sit in moral condemnation, I just mock it and them, as any self-respecting Gen Xer should do.
So the state that has arguably fumbled housing development the WORST out of any state – the “experts”, are criticizing others? The same experts that squandered $24B+ dollars on “formerly homeless housing projects”? Give me a break!
And tariffs!? Companies like Walmart are most worried about the tariffs. Why? Because they make so much product based on slave labor in China. Same with Target and many other gigantic retailers. It’s good they are complaining! That is the point. If they want to avoid tariffs and benefit from a very low corporate tax rate? Then manufacture in AMERICA! It’s that simple. Your product won’t have tariffs and you get a low tax rate. Wow!
The tariffs will most help small and medium size business grow IN AMERICA. Liberals are wrong on almost every major policy area – from housing and drug policy to taxation and foresight (state has massive unfunded pension liabilities).
Stop listening to the CA “leaders.” They are always wrong and it’s nearly impossible to make housing development “worse” in CA.
Actually, the Boomers did better than so many in Gen X did, though some didn’t fail early and a good number have pulled themselves out of the dive. It has been worse with the Millennials though some show hope and in practice, more now and Zs with their arrested development or a more useful term, lagging or “under-” development. The earlier Boomers had advantages the later ones didn’t have and those preceding them, which you often confuse with early and mid-Boomers at least, had it even better. (Did more to earn it, you could say, as I have noted Boomers say, too) Property was an asset before Boomers and others including their elders made it into something more like a commodity. (A product to be traded and re-traded, not limited to following equity securities the old-fashioned way during inflation, and it can be enhanced, refreshed, etc.) The change in mores in the corporate world began with Boomers’ predecessors, don’t forget, and there remain such persons (over age 78 now) influential with head-end Boomers. (Now it’s largely strip-mining and parasitism, making the 80s seem tame if not innocuous.)
The bunching and backups in the career tracks from mid-Boomers onward will be resolved as will be a number of other effects by the inevitable already-starting disappearance of a big cohort gradually, ages 60 to 78 at this time, and with it, your beloved enrichment source and for so many, a coming potential bear market in securities, if not real estate in some places. Of course, the whole economy is changing including currently with fewer management levels (not limited to GM’s and other pre-Boomer-led big corporations’ plights).
The Boomers are just a big cohort, that “pig in a python,” and they’re moving on as all of us are with the years. They’re not homogeneous any more than the other cohorts are, even though the latest do have more (negative) generalities of note at this time.
California already struggles with a severe shortage of affordable housing, and proposed changes to immigration enforcement could place even greater stress on the system.
Stricter policies might deter undocumented immigrants from accessing essential resources, including housing assistance, out of fear of deportation. This could lead to overcrowding in existing accommodations or force vulnerable populations into homelessness. Furthermore, immigrants, many of whom contribute significantly to California’s economy through industries like agriculture and construction, are vital to the housing market as renters and even as part of the workforce building new housing. Restrictive immigration measures risk destabilizing these sectors, potentially slowing housing development and worsening affordability issues.
Addressing California’s housing crisis requires inclusive and thoughtful policies. Collaborative efforts between federal, state, and local governments should prioritize humane immigration reforms and invest in affordable housing development. Ignoring these interconnected issues could have long-term economic and social consequences for one of the nation’s most populous states.