California clearly has a housing affordability disaster. Sadly, the response from Sacramento politicians has solely made the issue worse. Cities and resident teams at the moment are pushing again, and a current court docket submitting by one of many nation’s main planning consultants confirms their rivalry that state leaders have gotten it mistaken.
The narrative extensively circulated is that if we merely densify our cities, get rid of single-family zoning and take away the power of our native councilmembers to evaluation housing developments, the outcome shall be extra reasonably priced housing. In a shocking authorized submitting, this narrative was upended by a high city planner.
Professor Michael Storper, from UCLA’s Luskin Faculty of Public Affairs, filed a authorized declaration in help of the Southern California cities’ lawsuit towards the state of California over the passage of SB9. SB9 is the legislation that eliminates single-family zoning and permits house owners to separate their lot and construct as many as 4 to 6 items. The cities’ lawsuit claims that though SB9 was handed on the premise that it will result in extra reasonably priced housing, it has no affordability necessities, so is not going to enhance affordability.
Storper agrees based mostly on his 2019 paper, and he’s prepared to testify below oath to show that the at present standard narrative supporting the state’s insurance policies is unabashedly unfaithful. He says the present narrative is “basically flawed and lead(s) to simplistic and misguided coverage suggestions” and really harms residents and communities as a result of gentrification and displacement.
Gentrification outcomes when new costly housing is constructed and the present residents can now not afford to dwell there, which happens most frequently in communities of colour. Over 100 legal guidelines have been handed just lately that require denser cities and get rid of native planning, however affordability has solely gotten worse with extra unhoused residents.
Storper says that the states’ faulty narrative “diverts consideration away from the actual want to handle housing affordability for low- and moderate-income teams already residing within the affluent metropolitan areas.” These state insurance policies are an unqualified failure, and a revered world coverage knowledgeable is prepared to testify that this complete narrative just isn’t solely false however is resulting in widespread gentrification and displacement.
To make issues worse, the state has weaponized the housing planning processes, including steep fiscal penalties on cities, hiring legal professionals to sue cities and eradicating native enter for initiatives if manufacturing targets aren’t met. An previous legislation known as the “Builder’s Treatment” permits builders to construct nearly something, wherever, if a metropolis doesn’t have an authorized Housing Component that satisfies state bureaucrats. Tons of of Builder’s Treatment initiatives have been filed throughout the state, taking native elected officers and residents fully unexpectedly.
How will we repair the untenable place that our state has imposed on us? The one resolution is to move a constitutional modification that will permit cities to override the state legal guidelines which might be failing to resolve our affordability and homelessness disaster — the Our Neighborhood Voices Initiative. The state ought to return their consideration to working with the cities, as now we have achieved efficiently in our previous. Sacramento’s one-size-fits-all insurance policies don’t work — solely robust native democracy and metropolis leaders working with the residents can obtain our shared targets.
Thanks, Professor Storper, in your willingness to testify that the favored narrative of upzoning, densification and deregulation of California’s housing markets doesn’t and won’t work.
We should unite, battle for native democracy and remedy the advanced downside of housing affordability collectively.
Susan Candell is a member of the Lafayette Metropolis Council.
