“By making one part of town or the whole city unavailable to, say, multifamily housing, or housing that is located on a smaller lot, what that means is that all the housing in that particular area becomes more expensive and then unavailable to people with lower incomes,” she said.
Granted, a duplex in Woodside will remain unaffordable to most. But Tounstine argues that, “on the margins, developing more housing will increase integration in the community.” In more recent research, Trounstine found pretty much everyone, regardless of race, income or political party, prefers single-family homes to. However, she says that white and wealthy residents have always had more power to push their preferences.
“What really has to happen in order for integration to work is not to shove more housing into the same neighborhoods that have always had more housing,” she said. “It’s to put housing everywhere, and to make sure that the most exclusive places don’t get to maintain their exclusivity.”What could the end of single-family zoning mean for California’s affordable housing crisis?
In the new episode of “Gimme Shelter: The California Housing Crisis Podcast.” CalMatters’ Manuela Tobias and the Los Angeles Times’ Liam Dillon break down zoning reform as proposed by SB 9. They are joined by Kevin de León, a Los Angeles city council member and former state Senate leader, who explains his opposition to the…