Wanted: Your Out-of-the-Box Strategies for Housing California’s ‘Missing Middle’

August 2020

State Treasurer Fiona Ma is leading the charge to find solutions to California’s workforce and middle-income housing crisis.

In 2019, she convened the Housing, Economic Development, Jobs and Opportunity Zone Ad Hoc Committee and tasked this diverse group of thought leaders with developing innovative solutions and out-of-the box strategies that can advance the state’s housing and economic development goals.

Now she invites all Californians to work with her and the ad hoc committee to identify creative ideas and strategies that can produce more homes for California families in need of housing – especially those counted among the “missing middle.”

Prior to the dissolution of local redevelopment agencies in 2012, affordable housing programs in California focused on households earning up to 120 percent of area median income. Since 2012, affordable housing programs in the state have largely been limited to benefitting those earning no more than 60 percent of area median income.

As housing costs in the state have rapidly increased, many California communities find they have market rate rental housing suitable for higher income residents and subsidized rental housing for lower-income residents. Left out are middle-income households that cannot afford the former and do not qualify for the latter. These households are known as the “missing middle.”

As of 2018, California ranked next to last among states in its shortage of housing units. The National Low Income Housing Coalition estimates 1.3 million renters in California have incomes at, or below, federal poverty guidelines. Yet, there are just 286,844 affordable units across the state.

California’s missing middle includes workers who are critical to our economy and critical to individual communities. They provide health care, public safety and other services. Most of the missing middle work in the service sector, meaning they need to be near job centers, where housing costs are often highest.

If you have ideas or examples of good public-private partnerships that are helping with these issues, please contact Diana Yang, Administrator for the Treasurer’s Housing, Economic, Jobs and Opportunity Zone Ad Hoc Committee at diana.yang@treasurer.ca.gov, or 916-203-1425.