Mercedes Shaffer, Broker

California policymakers frequently speak about affordable housing, expanding housing opportunities, and preserving the American Dream. Yet while pursuing these goals, government continues to pull the wrong lever.

If the objective is to increase housing availability and improve affordability, public policy should encourage investment in housing. Instead, policymakers have increasingly responded to housing challenges by imposing additional regulations, restrictions, liabilities, and compliance requirements on housing providers. The result is predictable: higher costs, reduced investment, and ultimately fewer housing opportunities.

Over the past several years, housing providers have been required to navigate statewide rent caps under AB 1482, just-cause eviction requirements, expanded disclosure obligations, stricter habitability standards, relocation assistance requirements, fair housing compliance rules, and growing legal exposure.

More recently, SB 567 significantly expanded restrictions surrounding owner move-ins and substantial remodel terminations while increasing penalties for noncompliance. Local jurisdictions have layered additional requirements on top of state law, creating a patchwork of regulations that grows more complex each year.

At the same time, property owners continue to absorb rising maintenance costs, insurance premiums, utility expenses, labor costs, financing costs, property taxes, permitting costs, and compliance expenses. Yet the policy response is often another mandate, another restriction, or another administrative burden.

Housing is created and preserved through investment. Every apartment community, duplex, and rental home exists because someone was willing to invest capital, assume risk, and operate the property as a business.

When government continually increases costs, regulations, taxes, and legal liability, it should not be surprising when investment slows. Less investment means fewer housing providers, fewer improvements, fewer new housing projects, and ultimately less housing available for Californians.

When the cost, complexity, and risk of providing housing increase, investment becomes less attractive. Investors delay acquisitions, postpone improvements, cancel projects, or move their capital elsewhere, and the result is less housing supply.

Ironically, many policies intended to improve affordability can have the opposite effect. When fewer investors are willing to purchase, improve, or build housing, supply becomes constrained. And when supply is constrained, affordability suffers.

If California genuinely wants more affordable housing, policymakers should focus on encouraging housing investment rather than discouraging it. That means reducing unnecessary regulations, simplifying compliance requirements, streamlining development approvals, lowering the tax burden on housing providers, and creating greater balance in legal liability between housing providers and residents.

For decades, small property owners have been an important part of California’s housing ecosystem. Many are not large corporations. They are families, retirees, immigrants, entrepreneurs, and working professionals who invested in housing as a path toward financial security and economic mobility. Rental housing ownership remains one of the most accessible forms of entrepreneurship and wealth creation available to ordinary Americans.

If California is serious about affordability, entrepreneurship, and expanding access to the American Dream, it is time to stop pulling the lever that discourages housing investment and start pulling the one that encourages it. More investment creates more housing. More housing improves availability. And greater availability is the most sustainable path toward affordability.

Mercedes Shaffer is a multifamily real estate broker, serving Orange County and LA County. For questions about buying, selling or 1031 exchanges, contact her team at 714.330.9999, InvestingInTheOC@gmail.com, or you can visit their website at InvestingInTheOC.com BRE 02114448 REAL Brokerage