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Comment by scottlamb | Hacker News Reader

> I never understood why we allow people who don't own the land dictating the terms of the housing that gets built when we need more of every kind of housing in California.

So we could keep out black people: https://www.kqed.org/news/11840548/the-racist-history-of-sin...

Folks have come up with reasons more palatable to folks in the 21st reason. Some of those reasons may be valid, and some of those folks honestly believe those reasons are why we have zoning. I'm not going to call them racist, but that article makes a compelling case single-family zoning was originally due to racism.

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While I 100% think that SFH has often been used for this reason I think larger reason that "my house will go up in value if I restrict all other building" is more accurate. Keeping out black people was one of the early use cases with it but certainly not the only or the first.

SFH has existed heavily in New England, Canada, Iowa, pretty much every where in North America in spots where there are very few black people. Even heavily black neighborhoods like Baldwin Hills (aka Black Beverly Hills) historically had quite a bit of single family zoning. I think if that thesis was true you'd see large historical discrepancies with SFH in different states but you really don't.

I grew up in a suburban white town next to a city that was 95% white and our town had a lot of NIMBYs who prevented condos from going up. I do no think it was because they were cool with 95 white people moving in but scared of 5 non-white people. I think they just knew that it was bad for property values (for supply/demand reasons) + property taxes (for budgetary reasons) and were selfish.

The only reason I push back on this is because I don't think its helpful. I live in LA and the most common cited arguments against SB9/SB10 was that it would hurt "middle class minorities in south LA" and the representatives of these areas all voted against the bill (presumably because their biggest donors are black+hispanic+white landowners in these areas)

> Keeping out black people was one of the early use cases with it but certainly not the only or the first.

No, it was the first in the US, as described in the article I linked. I agree it's not the only reason, but I think it's important to mention the racist origins every time someone gives another reason for single family zoning.

[Edit: I originally said first in North America. I misremembered what the article said. Changed to US to match it. Wouldn't surprise me if first in North America were also true though.]

It could also just be that people don't like change or don't want additional density around them, regardless of effects on their home value.

> "my house will go up in value if I restrict all other building" is more accurate.

This was also a reason used to keep blacks and minorities out of predominately white neighborhoods. Many people believed that bringing blacks into a neighborhood would devalue their homes. Once a black person moved into your neighborhood - "there goes the neighborhood".

It was a self-fulfilling prophesy because once blacks moved into a neighborhood, all the white families would move out ( white flight ) which caused housing values to collapse since there were so many more sellers than buyers.

On the flip side, it's why gentrification increases home values. As blacks/minorities are kicked out of the neighborhood and it becomes more white, it attracts more whites to move in. More buyers than sellers. Gentrification is the exact opposite of the white flight phenomenon in america.

> So we could keep out black people: https://www.kqed.org/news/11840548/the-racist-history-of-sin...

That article hardly proves that SFH was primarily a tool for racism. It only says the first Bay Area SFH law, in Berkeley, was championed by a guy who didn't allow property to be sold to blacks. This is not compelling evidence for SFH being a channel for racism in any subsequent cases across different cities.

Due to redlining, black people generally couldn't buy houses. They rented. Having multi-family units means letting renters into your neighborhood, which means letting black people in. In many part of the US, politicians in county elections often run on "eliminating multi-tenant housing to reduce crime", which is a dog-whistle to racists.

I don't think it's necessary to provide references here. The history of housing discrimination is well researched and just a quick google search away for you. I know this is HN and the culture is to require proof, but seriously, some people just need to educate themselves, because otherwise they aren't receptive to listening.

> It only says the first Bay Area SFH law, in Berkeley, was championed by a guy who didn't allow property to be sold to blacks. This is not compelling evidence for SFH being a channel for racism in any subsequent cases across different cities.

You're underselling it. The first US single-family zoning law, not just first in the Bay Area.

Yes, maybe all of the subsequent single-family zoning laws that spread across the US were for totally different reasons than the first one. Personally I find that unlikely.

>I'm not going to call them racist

...because that would be absurd.

If there are possibly valid reasons, shouldn't we instead discuss those?

We don't need to speculate. There is strong support in the historical record that many cities adopted single family zones for explicitly racist reasons.

> If there are possibly valid reasons, shouldn't we instead discuss those?

That's a matter of opinion, but since you asked me: no. Every discussion of single family zoning should start with its racist origins and go on to consider the negative racial and socioeconomic effects it's still having, and to hell with parking and the other selfish, greedy, petty, short-sighted, and/or misguided reasons for denying folks affordable housing.

The prevalance of these state sanctioned laws and their rebranded remnants reminds what I liked about the first few episodes of Lovecraft Country.

Its basically like the show Supernatural except with the twist that Dean and Sam Winchester had to hunt demons but also had to escape white only neighborhoods and sundown towns every episode, because they were black.

That kind of perpetual threat alongside a different non-race related plot isn't portrayed often.

Oh, I do understand that was/is a motivation, I was being more rhetorical.

Goes hand in hand with red-lining.

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