Last week, the California legislature passed a Senate Bill 9, which bans single-family zoning. The YIMBYs — really YISEBYs (yes in someone else’s backyard) — claim this is a victory for more affordable housing, but it isn’t. In fact, it is a victory for densification, and density has never made housing more affordable.
Not only are higher densities not more affordable, data from 429 urban areas in the 2019 American Community Survey indicate that higher densities are incompatible with housing affordability; specifically that densities above 4,000 people per square mile almost inevitably drive median housing costs to more than four times median family incomes.
Like Oregon’s anti-single-family zoning law, California’s law effectively allows up to four homes on every lot that now has one. And, like Oregon’s law, experts agree that it will be many years before SB9 has any effect on housing prices, if it ever does.
After World War II, Henry J. Kaiser showed the world how to build housing affordable to the masses. Kaiser pioneered assembly-line techniques, building hundreds or thousands of homes at a time on vacant land in Los Angeles, San Jose, and Portland suburbs. Kaiser’s methods were soon emulated by the Levitt Brothers in the East, with both builders aiming at working-class homebuyers.
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Such assembly-line techniques require large areas of vacant land. Allowing builders to construct infill housing on lots scattered around a city may slightly increase supply, but not at affordable costs.
In both California and Oregon, housing has become unaffordable because land-use laws have made it illegal for developers to build large numbers of homes on vacant land. Thanks to these laws, almost 95 percent of California and 98.5 percent of Oregon are off limits to development, and the land that is open to development has already been developed. This makes it impossible for builders to use the techniques that made Kaiser and Levittown homes affordable.
Until these laws are repealed, housing will remain unaffordable. Laws like SB9 serve only planners who want to force Americans to live at higher densities.
After codes for so-called “middle housing” are adopted, the next step will be to REQUIRE multiple unit construction on every lot. This will be deemed necessary to address the “housing crisis” the regulators have created and because single-family homes are “racist.”
Setting aside politics in regards to Cali’s SB9, I’m a bit shocked that they didn’t limit these changes to lots served by municipal water systems. Given the costs involved for a new septic on top of construction, it’s unlikely anyone following the rules is going to put in a duplex. And those who don’t follow the rules, well, they’re going to create a lot of literally shitty water.
A ban on single family zoning ? a ban in single family developments. I don’t understand how people who are all about free markets and less regulation support more regulation by the government when it comes to zoning like this.
* A ban on single family zoning does not equal a ban on single family housing. I don’t understand how people who are all about free markets and less regulation support more regulation by the government when it comes to zoning policies like this.
Ahh the coming lawsuits. Gonna sit back, grab a lemonade and watch this political carnage unfold
OregonEconomist knows there’s nothing in the new laws requiring anyone to live in a multi-family structure, so he dreams up a fictional “what’s next” thing to get mad at instead.
Janehavisham wants to pretend like this change in zoning is not an assault in the ongoing war on single family housing. This is a well-used tactic from the socialist playbook. When Oregon’s land use planning laws were established in the 1970s, proponents insisted that Urban Growth Boundaries would NOT result in higher costs for housing. The 20-year land supply was supposed to prevent higher housing prices. Socialists then spent the last 50 years making it almost impossible to expand a UGB and erecting more barriers for all development. Now every city in Oregon is way behind on housing production and none have a realistic plan to meet housing needs. When housing becomes even more of a crisis, I predict the Socialists will claim that the market cannot provide enough housing so the public sector will need to step in. And we know what happens when the government needs to provide a high quantity of “affordable” housing. Welcome to the projects, comrade!
LazyReader, yep, it’s going to be fun watching how they turn out just like the lawsuits against SB35:
https://www.latimes.com/socal/daily-pilot/news/story/2021-02-02/huntington-beach-loses-housing-case-with-state-of-california
Just looked up “socialism” in the dictionary and I admit that owe OregonEconomist an apology. Sure enough, the dictionary says plainly – in no uncertain terms! – that socialism is “when a property owner is allowed to build a duplex on their land”.
Still not falling for it Jane. If property owners were clamoring for elimination of single-family zoning then it would happen at the local level. In some cities this has happened. But the zoning reform in this article is being imposed by the state on communities that don’t want it by people who think they know better than the local residents on how to regulate development in every neighborhood. That Socialism.
This is California’s idea of ‘reform’: have the state try to centrally plan its way out of problems that local government centrally planned its way into.
Of course, it will do little to reduce housing costs, even in the long term. Zoning is only one among several regulatory restrictions, and in California’s case, far from the most important. More prominently, it does nothing to reduce the supply shortage, which is more a matter of the shortage of skilled labor in the construction industry.
@MJ
” it will do little to reduce housing costs, ”
So if you agree that it will reduce housing cost (even if only by a little) I still don’t see why you would be opposed to this policy.
My argument with it is that:
1) it ignores the bulk of what is driving house price increases in that region, meaning that attention that could be devoted to more consequential policy changes is instead frittered away on marginalia, and that
2) I remain unconvinced that this policy is really even about housing prices. Rather it is borne of planners’ commitment to density as a matter of aesthetics and ‘good’ urban form.
There are also several other policy and non-policy factors that are driving up housing prices, but these are not even mentioned let alone considered as part of the local policy response. I think I know why.
Let’s not forget that San Francisco also has inclusionary zoning as part of its current Molotov cocktail of housing policies. If this hasn’t effectively reduced housing prices (it may have even increased them), I don’t think a few more duplexes are going noticeably affect them.