Wait, you have a problem with a city government trying to serve the people who actually live in a neighborhood rather than potential new residents?
That's the whole point of a city government. To serve the people living in the city.
A lot of zoning code is based on similar ideas, even if most people are not dumb enough to say the quiet part out loud these days.
You do still hear it on occasion: Bend, Oregon, where I live, passed a similar change a few years back, which was then superseded by Oregon's HB 2001, which effectively eliminates exclusionary zoning in our cities. At the local hearing for the Bend rule, there was a woman who was really upset that "renters" might be able to live in her neighborhood. They're dirty, messy, and "don't care about where they live", according to her testimony.
It's economic segregation, plain and simple.
That's the way it's always been. Here's an '80s example I ran across just the other day, and I'm actually grimly impressed by the clever video editing that puts up a WW2-era photo of mostly-white schoolkids to anchor a viewer's thinking away from "is this racist?" just as he says the worst part about "them" lol https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=973&v=jCMvOiupDLo
Now, younger less settled people also need places to live, and the Bay Area’s solution is to send them to Stockton or something, but not everything is about race.
This can be generalized - beyond the housing debate - as "having skin in the game".
As someone who has been (at various times) a short and long term renter, a landlord, and a homeowner ... it rings true to me that, generally speaking, renters invest less in their homes and their neighborhoods and have less at stake in the outcomes of those neighborhoods/communities.
That was certainly the case with me as a renter.
I don't think it's morally negative to segregate neighborhoods on the basis of renting vs. owning. The attempts to link this kind of segregation to past periods of literal racial segregation is, in my opinion, going to find less and less traction - especially as non-white stakeholders (homeowners) aspire to the same kind of skin-in-the-game cooperation with their neighbors.
What about the rampant housing discrimination in home-buying (without any enforcement) [0]? What about massive racial wealth disparates?
I think it is pretty naïve to suggest that the current backlash against having "renters" has nothing to do with race. Not more naïve than suggesting it only has to do with race, but close.
[0]: https://projects.newsday.com/long-island/real-estate-agents-...
Or, we could take a shortcut and ask those very people what they think and what they would like.
Which is to say, let's find some non-white stakeholders (homeowners) with skin in the game in their neighborhoods and communities and ask them what they think.
I drive through some very nice, very well ordered, single family zoned nieghborhoods in Fremont - the owners of which are predominantly non-white. The same exists in many other bay area communities.
Are those people vehemently advocating for upzoning and loss of local control ? Do those people have a strong preference for owners over renters ?
Genuinely curious ...
In some cities in California, houses are "earning" more on an hourly - yes, hourly - basis than many people do:
https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article208678414.html
That's a bit dated, pre-pandemic, but it's likely still happening in places.
Source on real estate prices in SF falling?
Note that this isn't true in locations with actual renter's rights, like Switzerland.
Plenty of people who rent might buy if there were more opportunities to do so, which there would be if housing weren't such an artificially scarce good in the US.
And when you describe 'those neighborhoods', keep in mind that that's probably a policy. If all neighborhoods had a mix of people, you wouldn't have quite so much of a concentration of people who aren't as wealthy.
I don't think this is possible, or even desirable.
A huge part of a home's value is the neighborhood. How much crime is there? How good are the schools? How are the neighbors?
A "fancy" house and an "affordable" house in the same neighborhood are not going to have a large price difference. If you revert every neighborhood to the mean, then you more or less revert all property prices to the mean. Which means you have erased all the "affordable" housing options, and also reduced the QOL of the top 50% of people.
Also, even to the extent that values are dominated by other factors, the intention is to increase housing availability through higher supply and lower prices. All housing becoming as expensive as upper middle class housing would be a problem, but all housing becoming as affordable as existing low income housing would be great.
Your expectation is that a 1000 sq ft "house" on a quarter acre of land would cost on the order of the same amount as a 4000 sq ft "house" on a full acre of land?
Its the same exact reason why houses cost more in Boston than in Wyoming, but on a different scale. The value of a home is heavily influenced by its location.
I think its reasonable to expect this to be more true of houses than apartments. Someone who is buying a house and putting down roots is going to care more about "the neighborhood" than someone who plans to move on in a year or two.
This is unambiguously as a result of zoning. It's rare to divide a one acre plot into four quarter acre plots because it's prohibited.
> Its the same exact reason why houses cost more in Boston than in Wyoming, but on a different scale. The value of a home is heavily influenced by its location.
Nobody is disputing that. But all that means is that a quarter acre plot in Boston costs the same as a full acre plot in Wyoming. It still costs a lot less than a full acre plot in Boston, which is often the only option the existing zoning makes possible.
Where I lived in Italy, you actually had very different homes very close by - big expensive single family units right next to 10 plexes that are far more affordable.
Frankly, I think it was healthier for my kids to go to school there with both some kids from wealthy families as well as Nigerian immigrants. Their schools here are much more homogeneous.
America has the cheapest housing in the Developed world. SF is not cheap, but its still cheaper than big cities in Europe.
Land is mostly cheaper in the US, but Italy and most of Europe provide far more housing options, in large part because they do not impose things like single family zoning.
Padova has twice the population of the town where I live here in the US, in about the same area, and housing is cheaper.
The economy isn't great there, but that's a separate story from housing. If it were hotter, it's a place where you can simply build homes in many shapes and sizes, from small apartments to nice villas.
https://www.accountingbolla.com/blog/property-tax-in-italy-g...
When people of different classes ( not races ) have different opinions on what 'good' means, there is only going to be confusion.
even a good neighborhood, once it is deemed as undesirable, will lose its values, its taxes, and soon, its schools.
While it is true the renter does not have "skin in the game" it is also true that many landlord put in only the absolute bare minimum of resources to maintain the rental property.
For example my grandmother before she passed lived in a aging neighborhood, as the original residents passed the homes where sold off as investment properties. She generally had a good relationship with most of the renters however the owners of homes routinely refused to repair things, refused to have proper tree maintenance done, and other such problems that would not be the responsibility of the renter.
The owners of the properties were not waiting out the poor people hoping to strike it rich like you seem to be implying
Sure, but we're not talking about "everything", we're talking about housing trends in American cities.
Also contributes massively to sprawl and thus carbon emissions because you can't have a more traditional sort of neighborhood where people might walk to the park and corner store.
Nothing against people owning a 1 acre lot if they want - that's fine! Imposing it on everyone is economic segregation.
Uhhh not in the very least. Many of us want to live in areas that have 3-acre minimum lots because of a little thing called nature. Those who want to live crammed into micro-apartments with 1 tree for every 30 people can, but those of us who want a whole town that is more grass that pavement should NOT be accused of classism or racism.
If you really want to help poor people, figure out a system that doesn't box them into ever-decreasing concrete apartments further and further from clean air.
If everyone lived on 3 acres, you know how much truly wild land would be paved over?
Now, I strongly agree that people ought to have the right to purchase and live on a large lot if they want. Great, you earned it, have fun!
Requiring that? That's using the government to perpetuate a sprawly, carbon-intensive lifestyle that very much does exclude those who are not wealthy enough to purchase that much land. That's part of the point in many places with that kind of regulation.
The majority of residents of an area using the government to control that area is the pinnacle of democracy.
>> If everyone lived on 3 acres, you know how much truly wild land would be paved over?
Actually, no there's plenty of land in America. Nothing would be paved, it would just be moved to yards (hint yards aren't paved). And if the population doesn't grow, then there's no reason America can't live like that forever.
When excluding illegal immigration, the US population is actually shrinking. There's no need to artificially box ourselves in.
15.77b acres of habitable land. http://www.zo.utexas.edu/courses/THOC/land.html
15.77 / 7.7 = 2.04
Every human could have about 2 acres. At this level of distribution humans would essentially live in wilderness and integrate with nature. Oftentimes humans live in family groups so the actual point distribution would be uneven.
Unfortunately arable land needed to feed the humans varies by locale but tops at about .6 hectacres [0] or 1.48 acres[1]. This means that effective wilderness could be slightly less than .5 acres per human after some nominal usage for housing and utility right of ways.
0. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/arable-land-use-per-perso...
1. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=.6+hectares+to+acres&atb=v83-1__&i...
That's false though. There are a lot of animals that do not want to be anywhere near humans, roads, houses or anything else. The presence of people wrecks it for them. Not to mention the jacked up carbon emissions if everyone had to drive around for everything because everyone is spread out.
Human-avoiding life already has a hard time. The habitable surface estimate did not include many areas where the remaining ones exist, such as tundra, ice pack, mountains and deserts. Additionally inter-human proximity preference distribution will allow for additional area outside the aforementioned surface classifications.
This is fine to have a town like this.
But a town like this has no business being in a major metropolitan area of the US such as the Bay Area. (I'm looking at you, Atherton.)
https://www.vox.com/22252625/america-racist-housing-rules-ho...
We can't. That's the problem.
Sounds like you do, you more or less accused anyone that desires a 1 acre plot of classism or wanting to "keep the poor people out", and of wanting to destroy the environment.
In reality most people that want that simply desire privacy, I for example desire that because i do not want to "walk to the corner store" or have a park at all in my neighborhood. I do not want to have "neighborhood" events, or be able to talk to my neighbor from my porch.
I want privacy, I want to be able to enjoy my hobbies which are solitary pursuits not group activities.
I agree but only in the sense that it should include 39 more acres. And a mule.
Central planning leads to a situation where market signals are ignored, and entrenches the status quo, rather than allowing cities (and economies in general) to change as needed. It seems highly unlikely that we've stumbled upon the "perfect" land use pattern. Why make it impossible to change from it then?
I'm referring to zoning as the central planning. It's central planning at a local scale, but still central planning.
Instead of letting each town set its own course, why not just let each property owner set their own course (within reasonable limits for market failures, like safety)?
My entire point is that restrictive zoning is the bureaucrats in the city governments deciding what the best use is for each plot of land, rather than letting the market decide based on demand.
Also, if we look at the Berkley case (which is what the OP is about!), there was no external force, the town made the change on its own.
I've seen this claim in this discussion but without hard evidence that this was the sole or even primary motivation at the time (who would you even measure/prove that?). Regardless, it isn't the motivation today behind zoning so I am not sure why it matters what the motivation was 100 years ago. I feel like that's a weak attempt by urban activists to associate a negative label (like "racist") with zoning to trivialize the legitimate reasons people like zoning restrictions.
People want zoning so that they can retain the kind of city or neighborhood character they want to live in. There's nothing wrong with incumbents resisting change that accommodates others at their own expense. The point of local government is to serve the incumbent residents first and foremost and I don't see why the desires of newcomers to live wherever they want at whatever price point they want supersedes the quality of life that existing residents have sought out and cultivated for themselves previously. Those newcomers are certainly free to move to a part of the country with less demand than the Bay Area and make a life there.
> It's economic segregation, plain and simple.
Not really. It's segregation by people who are invested in their community versus people who may move on because they haven't put down deep roots. And even if it was economic segregation in effect or directly, so what? I, and certainly most other parents, want a safe neighborhood for our families, and higher income neighborhoods typically experience less crime. I also want better educated and more successful people in my neighborhood, because their children form the environment and society my children are exposed to and influenced by. Leaving all that aside, an influx of renters changes a city's politics, culture, and other characteristics. I've seen this first-hand in Seattle where the dramatic changes of the last 10 years have really hurt the quality of life in this city and crowded out 'old Seattle' culturally. So I see many understandable and legitimate reasons for people to want to avoid renters.
I don't think you can make an argument that you're going to repair any past harms by doing this. I think the argument that you're going to continue them if you do this is much stronger.
Why do you put protecting in quotes? The residents of areas typically like to be protected from demographic disruption, especially if the disrupting demographic is known to bring problems.
> Not a great look.
People are more worried about the place that they have to live, work, and raise their children than they are about your patronizing condescension.
So racism, got it.
Cities have many stakeholders. Residents, sure. But also businesses, workers, the homeless, the environment.
And there are tons of tradeoffs. Maybe by rezoning and not mandating single family homes, the increased population density will improve access to transit and services. It's not necessarily as cut and dried as "Rezoning is negatively perceived by current residents, therefore don't do it".
I am not sure if you are asking this as a rhetorical question, but if not ...
This aspect of the housing (and democracy) debate in the bay area is now framed in terms which reject local decision making ("local control") if those local decisions reinforce existing, exclusionary housing policies.
Which is to say, we like local control when it delivers results we agree with - like non-federal legalization of marijuana or so-called "sanctuary cities" but we don't like local control when it delivers results we disagree with.
Or, more succinctly:
"Democracy for me, but not for thee".