News

By Edward Ring : californiaglobe – excerpt

YIMBYs support legislation that mandates high density

With the introduction of the latest housing density mandate, AB 725 in the California state legislature, the battle between state control and local control in California intensifies. At the same time, the pandemic crisis and its economic consequences add additional complexity to an already complex issue.

The debate over California’s housing policies offers an unusual combination: vehement disagreement between two bitterly opposed groups, yet within both groups are factions holding thoroughly divergent political ideologies.

This probably should come as no surprise. California’s housing crisis, and the policies that created it, incorporate big, challenging issues: income inequality, how to treat the homeless, environmental protection, public finance. Libertarians and leftists, along with Republicans and Democrats, are lining up on both sides of the debate, confounding easy categorization…

Some of the bills that Livable California have opposed must be seen to be believed. AB 3173 (still active) provides incentives for developers to build 80 square foot “micro-units” – at least that’s a bit larger than the 70 square feet that the American Correctional Association recommends as the minimum size for a prison cell! SB 902 automatically up-zones single family areas to six units or more per parcel. AB 1279 designates “opportunity areas” where housing could be up-zoned to high rises accommodating as many as 120 units per half-acre….

The uncomfortable truth is that years of neglected infrastructure, defacto rationing, and urban containment legislation have already taken away much of the local control that would have allowed Californians to expand their cities and towns, and keep housing affordable.

Livable California, a genuine grassroots movement, has the potential to reverse this trend. If successful, they may eventually alter the policy driven economic conditions that prohibit lasting solutions.  The YIMBY movement, on the other hand, funded by billionaires, will never solve California’s housing crisis, because they aren’t questioning the doctrine of densification. But so what? Their donors will see their real estate portfolio investments soar into bubbleland, as they virtue signal all the way to the bank…(more)

COVID-19 has turned the tide against density in a way no one could have imagined. The media has taken a new view of the negative impacts of density that many have warned about as we see, first hand, how dangerous urban lifestyles can be. No where has the virus spread more rapidly than in large urban centers with major public transit networks that force close contact with anonymous strangers and long commutes. Transit directors know they cannot continue this way and it is time for the all city officials to get the same message that cities have to change if they are to survive.