Los Angeles, and California more broadly, has been struggling with an affordability crisis for years. Bad policies like restrictive zoning laws and broad development constraints have left L.A. with too few houses for too many people. How does the city plan to solve this crisis? With more bad policies, of course.

City Councilman Gil Cedillo has proposed that the Board of Public Works use eminent domain to expropriate the 124-unit Hillside Villa apartment building in Chinatown for affordable housing. Three decades ago, the city loaned the apartment developer $5.45 million to help build the apartments on the condition that, for 30 years, it would provide some affordable housing units.

But those 30 years are up, and since attempts at reaching a new deal haven’t panned out, those affordable units are about to switch over to market-value rates. That is, unless the city swoops in and purchases the complex against the property owner’s will. Not only would this plan trample on the property rights of the building’s owner, it doesn’t even solve the real problem.

Landlords aren’t just jacking up rates for no good reason. They’re increasing rates because there’s not a large enough supply of housing.

California has gotten itself into this situation, of course, by implementing a series of counterproductive policies. Its zoning restrictions prevent people from putting up more residential units. It’s not issuing enough building permits. And Proposition 13, which caps how much local governments can collect from property taxes, has disincentivized residential construction in favor of commercial construction.

So what California needs is more housing, but Councilman Cedillo’s proposal accomplishes nothing toward that end, and essentially amounts to bullying the apartment’s landlord into extending the terms of a completed contract.

See, when the government decides to use eminent domain, it puts property owners in an extremely disadvantaged position, because they often have little to no negotiating power. The government basically says, “The city is taking your property, and you’re going to sell it to us for however much money we decide to give you.”

It’s easy to see how this policy is a developer’s nightmare, and how it can have a chilling effect on a city’s housing supply.

Once the government comes in and takes people’s land, new developers are less likely to build there, for fear that the city will do the same thing to them.

The Hillside Villa owner, Thomas Botz, recognized this, and said as much to the L.A. Times: “‘If the city goes and expropriates buildings from private developers like us — who have made their 30-year deal and kept their end of the deal — just to have the building taken away at the end, no private developer would build another unit of housing in cooperation with the city of L.A. ever again.’”

Luckily, there are things California can do to increase the supply of housing and, in turn, lower costs for its residents. For starters, it could make it cheaper to build by cutting impact fees.

A study from UC Berkeley found that fees for a multifamily residential project estimate cost $12,000 per unit in Los Angeles, which represents about 6-10% of the median home price in Los Angeles.

Those costs make building in L.A. a huge financial feat and ultimately increase prices for consumers.

We’d all be better off if Proposition 13 were done away with. The fact that Proposition 13 keeps the amount of revenue localities can make from residential property taxes low, but leaves the amount of money they can make from commercial development untouched, creates a perverse incentive that leads local governments to favor approving commercial development over residential.

Lawmakers could also boost supply by streamlining the permit process. Indeed, 97 percent of cities and counties are behind on their permitting process for Regional Housing Needs Assessment permits.

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Re-elect Mike Garcia to represent 25th Congressional District Prioritizing these approvals and reducing the permitting burden for residential developments could get more housing units built faster.

Lastly, outdated zoning laws that unnecessarily restrict where residential housing can be placed ought to be nixed. Instead of making California a puzzle of commercial, residential, industrial and mixed-use zones, let people build where they want. If a developer wants to put apartments above a storefront, they should be allowed to. With few housing units available, no doubt people would be delighted to rent there.

Lawmakers shouldn’t muscle property owners out through oft-abused tactics like eminent domain in order to keep housing prices artificially low.

What they should do, however, is make it cheaper, easier, faster and simpler to build residential property in the state.

Brenée Goforth is a policy commentator in Raleigh, North Carolina. She works at a state-based think tank and is a contributor to Young Voices.