To the editor: Joel Kotkin’s piece is a welcome break from the orthodoxy, persistently promoted in your opinion pages, that relieving housing shortages calls for the densification of single-family neighborhoods. (“California’s housing problems require a better solution than densify, densify, densify,” Opinion, Feb. 18)
Kotkin cites analysis displaying that compelled densification does little to alleviate housing inflation. Extra importantly, he highlights an inconvenient reality.
In a latest Public Coverage Institute of California survey, 70% of the state’s adults most popular single-family residences. In a separate ballot, a big majority of Californians opposed state laws banning single-family zoning.
“If we construct it, they’ll come” is an unreliable mode of social engineering. Simply take a look at L.A.’s largely empty bike lanes.
Shelley Wagers, Los Angeles
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To the editor: Kotkin bravely proposes an unorthodox resolution to the housing disaster — discouraging multi-family growth the place individuals need to dwell, and as a substitute encouraging Californians in the hunt for reasonably priced housing to sprawl out additional into the Central Valley and Inland Empire.
If this sounds precisely like our housing established order, that’s as a result of it’s. Kotkin’s evaluation offers nothing however a misunderstanding of market forces in service of the NIMBY insurance policies that introduced us into this mess.
I agree that some environmental guidelines stand in the way in which of latest housing and want reform. Nonetheless, many of the land for housing in Southern California is already zoned for single-family residences, which Kotkin prefers. So why are Californians upset if surveys present they really need single-family houses? As a result of they’ll’t afford one!
Constructing denser housing in cities isn’t some authorities distortion of the free market. It’s permitting the housing market to develop provide the place demand is excessive. Individuals need to dwell in these areas — that’s why they’re costly.
I assist streamlining rules to permit the development of extra single-family houses in areas the place it’s at the moment tough to take action. However I additionally strongly object to age-old NIMBY insurance policies that solely serve to protect our established order.
Edward Williams, Los Angeles
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To the editor: Elected officers have to heed the knowledge of students equivalent to Kotkin and make the housing disaster a top-tier concern.
The vote final December by the Los Angeles Metropolis Council to protect 72% of L.A.’s residential land for single-family zoning will severely hinder new housing development. It will reinforce decades-long inequalities in L.A.’s housing market.
Until individuals who have been lucky to purchase their houses throughout rather more reasonably priced cycles acknowledge the urgency of this disaster, future generations won’t ever have the ability to obtain homeownership on job revenue alone. This impacts significantly the “lacking center” class of lecturers, cops, nurses and others who make an excessive amount of to qualify for help but too little to purchase a house within the communities they serve.
Lisa Ansell, Beverly Hills
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To the editor: Kotkin’s proposed options to the state’s housing disaster are usually not viable options.
He touts the advantages of peripheral growth as a approach to entice new homebuyers. The final time I checked, residence costs are excessive all over the place in L.A. County. The place is that this magical, low-cost land situated?
Second, he says that distant work choices make peripheral growth extra practicable. Outdoors the tech sector, distant work isn’t a viable possibility for many professions. Paradoxically, the extra tech jobs an space has, the extra residence costs go up.
Say what you want about infill growth, however many communities are usually not in favor of sprawling subdivisions. Infill growth conserves land, reduces automobile dependence and will stay a part of the answer to the housing scarcity.
Kristen Kessler, Ventura
