Reflections on Land Use and Housing Policy 1994-2026

Author: Bruce Gibson
Date: 4/20/2026 2:52 PM

I've been active in SLO County land use and housing decisions for 32 years-as a community advisory council member, community advocate, land conservationist, planning commissioner and county supervisor.

In recent months, I've spent some time looking back at various land use policy discussions and project decisions over those years and put together some notes on what I think has worked and what hasn't (available at the link below). I expect various folks will agree or disagree with these observations-my hope is that they might prompt further productive discussion.

The basic human need for shelter drives a lot of public conversation these days, especially here in California. Public servants and engaged citizens have talked for decades about housing supply and affordability, now regularly referring to the present-day situation as a crisis. For all the attention paid to housing - within the wider general issue of land use - government actions at the state and local level have seemed largely ineffective. The struggle to afford housing continues.

I've been active in SLO County land use and housing decisions for 32 years - as an advisory council member, community advocate, land conservationist, planning commissioner and county supervisor. Recently, I've wondered a lot about what we should expect from local government efforts to improve our housing situation. Certainly, the housing crisis is a problem much easier to admire than actually solve.

One might reasonably ask what local policy makers have learned during our years of struggle, so I've spent some time looking back at various policy discussions and project decisions (see Attachment 1). From that undertaking, I've developed some thoughts about what's worked and what hasn't, with a desire to more clearly define our current housing issues and have increased impact in the future.

Many folks' response to the full documentation of this exercise will understandably be "TL;DR." No offense taken. Here are the bullet points:

• Local land use policy and project decisions, especially as regards housing, are often made on strongly held assumptions, impressions and values, reflective of the passionate and emotional concerns that local residents voice regarding their communities and the surrounding landscapes.
• From the 1980s into the 2010s, most land use debate centered on rural land issues - for instance, whether and to what extent ag land should be subdivided for rural residential development.
  • The ag cluster subdivision and transfer of development credits programs tried to balance ag land protection and development (see Attachment 2), but were controversial and are now rarely used.
  • Ag land and open space protection is now mostly accomplished by land conservation (land trust) projects. Rural residential development is largely confined to numerous existing parcels created decades ago.
• As the problem of housing affordability has gotten worse over time, most local land use policy decisions have not had meaningful impact.
  • Over the last decade, the housing affordability index (HAI, percentage of households able to afford the median-priced home) has steadily declined - currently the HAI is about 10%.
  • Some success has been seen in the protection to mobile home park affordability with rent control and strict conversion/closure requirements.
  • The county's inclusionary housing ordinance was producing steady and growing funding for affordable housing projects through in-lieu fees, until it was discontinued in 2022 (for reasons not fully justified).
  • Home builders and others have long advocated for increased density and relaxed site development standards (since 2006); in response, actions such as adoption of planned development (2013) and workforce subdivision (2016) ordinances have not produced many new units.
  • In previous cycles of the state-mandated Regional Housing Needs Analysis/Plan (2001-2019), the production of affordable units has not come close to the number planned. A specific goal for actually producing affordable housing units (rather than planning) was not set by the BOS until 2023.
  • Recent local policy on funding the production of affordable units is based entirely on receiving grants and selling incentives, rather than ordinance-based exactions. The effectiveness of incentives has yet to be demonstrated.
• Wealth and income inequality in communities are strongly correlated with housing unaffordability, especially in desirable locations like SLO County. While local government can't mitigate that bigger societal problem, I don't think we should just give up on local actions. Rather, we should take a careful look at our approach:
  • Local housing policy is not informed by a sufficiently detailed strategic plan or data-informed implementation actions.
  • Reflective of that, local decision makers haven't set specific enough policy goals, nor tracked progress toward them.
  • Project decisions are not analyzed as to their contribution to achieving what specific goals do exist.
  • Policy decisions have typically been deferential to the wishes of the development community to encourage a supply-side solution that has not been realized.
  • Setting new policies to address current problems could benefit from historical data that are not easily accessed (if available at all).
• Our local policy-making and project decisions could be improved by setting more specific goals as part of a detailed strategic plan to address housing or other land use decisions.
• A significantly expanded and updated database of local housing, demographic, economic, geographic and other information could inform more effective decision-making. Key elements of such a database would include:
  • Detailed up-to-date information on housing stock, such as the distribution of unit size, unit age, estimated market price, geographic distribution, etc.
  • Detailed up-to-date demographic information, such as population age distribution by community, household size, household income, etc.
  • A database of local decision-making bodies' agendas, staff reports, minutes and video recordings, which would document previous policy and project discussions and decisions.
• Effective access to these data would likely benefit from a well-defined and properly controlled artificial intelligence (AI) interface.
  • A robust AI application, informed by appropriate economic models and the housing/demographic database above, could allow the impacts of potential policy approaches to be tested before implementation.
  • Currently, public records for the SLO County Board of Supervisors (BOS) and Planning Commission are online in digital form for the years 2006-present, but the search function is cumbersome and inefficient. AI access could, for instance, allow the history of specific policy and project decisions to be quickly summarized.
  • AI would be especially helpful in documenting what the BOS actually discussed and decided on a given item (as opposed to what was analyzed and recommended in the staff report), by directly summarizing the video recording, as well as the official minutes.

Summary:

• Building more housing is a good idea. Data show that housing production in California has not kept up with population growth and that imposes social and economic costs.
• Overarching economic forces - especially wealth and income inequality - appear to dominate the affordability metrics.
• Supply-side policies alone - simply building more housing of all types - have not been shown to improve housing affordability. Similarly, a recent assertion that the creation of high-end housing makes lower-cost units available and affordable to lower-income families is contradicted by local experience and affordability metrics.
• SLO County is such a desirable place to live that market-rate housing will get bid up to prices that workforce-income households can't come close to affording.
• Currently, only a very limited set of housing types - mobile and manufactured home parks and certain apartment developments - will be affordable by design.
• Local government can have the most direct impact by developing a robust, diversified revenue stream to fund deed-restricted affordable housing developments. Non-profit housing developers can leverage local government investments many times over to actually get such housing built.
• Policy development and oversight on policy outcomes should be informed by a significantly expanded database of housing and economic information, as well as an easily accessible public record of decisions made by public agencies. Access to all this information - and potentially the testing of new policy initiatives - might be aided by a carefully designed artificial intelligence application.

LINK to full Land Use and Housing Plicy 1994-2026 article.