Los Angeles Times

Editorial: California needs more housing and good jobs. There’s a bill to create both

Construction for Mark Riverside, a 22,000 square foot retail space with 165 housing units in downtown Riverside, California, in August 2020.

What if California could encourage developers to replace shuttered big-box stores, half-vacant offices and decrepit strip malls with apartments, condominiums and townhomes, with some or even all of the units being affordable? And what if the construction workers building those projects were paid union-level wages and, in some cases, received healthcare, thus creating lots of good-paying jobs.

It sounds like a win-win, right?

It should be. But in California — despite a housing shortage that has driven up home prices and rents to vastly unaffordable levels — politics

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