Change the rules The problem is in the planning, regulation, building codes and with the neighbors
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Second of two parts . Most of those who have studied the problem would agree with Steve Lawton, director of Community Development for the fast-growing East Bay city of Hercules, who says bluntly, “The lack of affordable housing is a huge public policy failure, and it can only be resolved by changing the rules. We’re taking the default option — push all the new households out to the Central Valley and make ‘em crazy on the freeways. “Instead, we need to establish new, regionally based institutions and tools of governance. Only then will land-use patterns fit our real needs.” Lawton identifies four underlying causes of the jobs/housing mismatch: – The Bay Area is now a global center; its job market, climate and culture will continue to attract new residents able to bid up the price of existing and new housing stock. “The winners,” he says, “are the existing homeowners who want to sell out, and the losers are most of the new households and much of the middle class now priced out of homeownership.” – The postwar home-building model — mass-producing a conventional suburban “monoculture” of single-family homes for families with children, four to an acre — has long been institutionalized in zoning regulations; but it does not produce the wide range of building types needed by people throughout their lives. “Consumers have a dizzying array of choices inside the house,” Lawton notes, “but few choices about the house itself. Home builders, like automakers in the 1950s, simply sell square feet and gadgets. Worse, production of multifamily housing has practically ceased due to California’s unique treatment of liability for alleged construction defects.” More : sfgate.com |