Senate Bill 9 , a 2021 housing bill that aimed to lightly increase density in single-family detached zoned areas. SB 9, the court ruled, was motivated by the pursuit of affordable housing and indeed, SB 9 housing has the potential, over 10 years, to create hundreds of thousands of homes affordable to low- and middle-income families.
The absurdity of defining affordability without including actual affordability runs deeper than it initially appears. The prosecution is correct in noting new market-rate homes are not guaranteed to meet any affordability criteria. However, the design of SB 9 is its own natural affordability mechanism. By allowing a parcel with an existing home to be replaced by two to four new homes, these development split the expensive cost of California’s land among multiple households instead of one.
The irony is that California’s focus on income-restricted housing and its strangulation of market-rate housing is exactly what has led to its unaffordability. Subsidized housing has failed to meet its own targets and has been criticized for entrenching racial and economic segregation. Policies requiring price controls, often misrepresented as inclusionary, have constrained, not expanded, the supply of housing.