Ventura County Has Nation’s Biggest Housing Shortage

Ventura County has the largest housing shortage in the nation.

That’s the conclusion of a study of housing underproduction by Up for Growth, which looked at construction from 2012 to 2021 in 193 U.S. metropolitan regions, including 23 in the state, the Orange County Register reported.

High home costs in California, the state with 11 of the 25 U.S. metropolitan areas with the largest housing shortages, are often tied to construction not keeping up with population and economic growth.

Across the state, large population centers came up short a total of 873,730 homes, or 6.5 percent of all homes statewide, according to the study by the Washington, D.C.,-based pro-housing policy group whose financial sponsors include Zillow, CBRE and the National Association of Realtors.

The combined metros across the nation were 2.55 million units short, or 3.3 percent of their combined homes. So California’s shortfall is twice as deep as the rest of the country.

In all, Up for Growth says the nation overall is 3.9 million housing units short of economic and residents’ needs, including non-metro areas. The projected deficit falls in the middle of other estimates, which says the U.S. lacks between nearly 2 million and 6 million homes.

Ventura County, a traditional farming region with a population of nearly 900,000 residents north of Los Angeles, includes the coastal cities of Oxnard and Ventura, as well as Camarillo, Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley, with agricultural towns along the Santa Clara River.

Home construction in the region with the nation’s largest housing shortfall runs 12.5 percent short of local needs, according to the study, or an underproduction of 36,161 homes.

The Inland Empire, which ranked third in the nation by the Up for Growth study, was 10.7 percent short, or 160,841 homes.

Los Angeles and Orange County, which together ranked 14th, was 7.1 percent short, or 332,275 homes.

— Dana Bartholomew