{"id":8846,"date":"2026-05-12T18:42:50","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T18:42:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/friscotimes.org\/?p=8846"},"modified":"2026-05-12T18:42:50","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T18:42:50","slug":"opinion-the-race-to-lower-californias-housing-costs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/friscotimes.org\/?p=8846","title":{"rendered":"Opinion | The Race to Lower California\u2019s Housing Costs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"\">\n<p class=\"css-8hvvyd\">But you have to cut the cost of construction somewhere. We are building houses and we are building apartment buildings the way we have been doing it for 100 years. And there is new technology to do this where you basically construct, manufacture the parts of the house off-site, the way you\u2019d construct or manufacture a car, and then you assemble it on-site. If we could get rid of the Trump taxes, the tariffs that are now being found illegal, that would help us reduce the cost of building materials. If we could stop going to war in foreign \u2014\u2014 The cost of construction in California was high before Donald Trump. It was high, but not as high as it is now. The speed is the driver. If we could be 22 months faster, which is what Colorado does, which does care about the environment and does have good worker standards, then the estimates are we could take 10 or even 20 percent off the price. And that was market rate. I strongly support the pending legislation that would create one uniform statewide permit, making it easier for everyone to have the same permit, easier for the state to monitor those denials. It\u2019s time and it\u2019s fees, are the two big levers we have control over. We have accumulated, I mean, I can tell you in my city over 10 pages\u2019 worth of fees that look good on paper. It\u2019s to mitigate every imaginable \u2014 it\u2019s traffic and park fees and affordable housing fees. And they all sound good. On their own, they\u2019re all justifiable. And they\u2019re well intended. But you stack them up and they\u2019re adding 10 to 20 percent to the cost of housing. And what the state can do is cap local fees. Prop 13 pushes cities to raise fees on new housing, because they aren\u2019t collecting enough in property taxes to pay the bills. I know Prop 13 is popular, but you say you\u2019re willing to do the unpopular things to fix the housing crisis. Why isn\u2019t Prop 13 reform one of them? First of all, I didn\u2019t vote for Prop 13. I\u2019m on record opposing Prop 13 since 1978. Look it up. Am I misreading your campaign site? Well, I do believe that we need to hold property taxes down, but let me explain. When we pass Prop 13, commercial properties were paying 60 percent of the freight. Homeowners were paying 40 percent. Now it\u2019s the other way around. But I do believe we need to fix Prop 13, but fix the whole broken tax system, but within the laws that we have today, Ezra. Yes, hold the line on property taxes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>But you have to cut the cost of construction somewhere. We are building houses and we are building apartment buildings the way we have been doing it for 100 years.&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":8847,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[1738,853,4628,57,254],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Opinion | The Race to Lower California\u2019s Housing Costs - Frisco Times<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/friscotimes.org\/?p=8846\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Opinion | The Race to Lower California\u2019s Housing Costs - Frisco Times\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"But you have to cut the cost of construction somewhere. 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