Effort should be applauded for revealing a truth about California’s failed housing policies.
A cadre of Silicon Valley elites is drawing fierce criticism from local residents and environmentalists for planning a new city on the outskirts of the Bay Area, a project dubbed “California Forever.” But the effort should be applauded for revealing a truth about California’s failed housing policies.
Some housing advocates insist that the solution is to force growth into existing neighborhoods. Yet the state’s supposedly pro-development new housing laws have yet to produce more homes at a scale sufficient to address the affordability crisis, and recent data suggest an accelerating decline in housing production.
Research by Jessica Trounstine at UC Merced similarly found that “preferences for single-family development are ubiquitous. Across every demographic subgroup analyzed, respondents preferred single-family home developments by a wide margin. Relative to single-family homes, apartments are viewed as decreasing property values, increasing crime rates, lowering school quality, increasing traffic and decreasing desirability.
California’s population is dropping and is not expected to increase in the next four decades, which alters projections of future housing needs. The solution lies in strategic growth. Rather than force growth in places that are declining in population and resistant to development, including Los Angeles County and San Francisco, the state needs to look at the parts of California that are growing, places such as Riverside and Yolo counties.
Equally promising, many new suburbs are being designed in consciously more sustainable ways, as MIT professor Alan Berger suggests. Sophisticated systems for controlling energy and water use can make suburban and exurban communities more environmentally responsible.
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