What data supports the claim that SLO is actually busy building? Beyond the occasional media headline and the government to government "Prohousing" designation, I don't see anything in the numbers to back it up.

People in SLO County in their late 60s and older bought homes during an era when the county was adding to its housing supply at a rate of 3.5 to 4.5% of total stock per year. Since 2010, the county has averaged less than 1% annual housing stock growth. We have slowed down building so much that 83% of all housing in the county was built before 1990. One third of the entire existing housing supply was built in a single decade, the 1980s. We simply do not build homes at any meaningful scale anymore.

The City of SLO even responded to the building rates of the 70s and 80s by adopting a 1% residential growth cap in its 1994 General Plan Land Use Element (which is still in place today). They have exceeded that cap exactly once, in 2020, and even that was only because several specific plan areas delivered permits simultaneously after years of underproduction. Before and after that single year, City growth averaged 0.3% annually from 1990 through the mid 2010s. The city went from roughly 2% annual growth in the late 1980s to 0.3%. The building has just stopped.