Full article by Russell Nichols at Sacramento News & Review
California’s housing crisis wasn’t built in a day, so to speak. The shortage at hand happened over time, caused by a perfect storm of population growth, restrictive building policies and the pursuit of the “American Dream.”
Historically, that dream has had a specific look: a single-family home in a richer, whiter single-family zone. About two-thirds of all California residences are zoned this way and, on average, less than 25 percent of state land is zoned for multifamily housing development, according to a 2018 residential land use survey from UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation.
But this century-old style has aged poorly, according to pro-housing advocates. They believe the single-family model clashes with the needs of modern lifestyles and forces developers to expand farther and farther out. This not only limits access to urban centers, but also disregards current trends of communal living, walkable cities and multigenerational households.
Senate Bill 9 — the California Housing Opportunity and More Efficiency (HOME) Act — was written to eliminate single-family zoning in California, allowing homeowners to split their lots into two parcels and develop a duplex on each one for a total of four units. This would give homeowners a chance to build a home for an elderly parent or create a new rental property, essentially giving more families an opportunity “to pursue their version of the California Dream,” said Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins (D-San Diego), who wrote the bill.