To alleviate its housing shortage, California could build as many as 225,000 homes and apartments on plots of vacant urban land scattered around the state, particularly in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
According to The New York Times, a new report from the McKinsey Global Institute offers a list of strategies to step up housing production in California, which has to triple its construction pace with 3.5 million new homes over the next eight years.
The Times has maps of the vacant lots in Los Angeles and San Francisco, showing where new housing opportunity lies. Of course, building on these lots is easier said than done. These spaces may have unoccupied buildings on them, and some may be used for parking.
And just because vacant lots exist, that does not mean the owners want to use them or a particular city would allow new construction. Some are small and oddly shaped. Others have open fields or school playgrounds, which many local residents want to preserve.
