HackMDLatest Article: Abolish Single-Family Zoning
It's worth noting that eliminating SFZ doesn't mean that people are coming to take away your home. It's simply legalizing a diversity of other types of housing.
Diverse Housing Types Promote Diversity: Research indicates that neighborhoods with a mix of housing types, including single-family homes, duplexes, and multifamily buildings, are more likely to exhibit racial and income diversity. This suggests that single-family zoning, by limiting housing diversity, may negatively impact overall community diversity
Impact on Inequality and Efficiency: In the United States, local planning often heavily favors detached single-family homes, known as R1 zoning. This approach is criticized for exacerbating inequality and undermining efficiency, with historical motivations rooted in classism and racism. Such policies might contribute to maintaining these inequalities today.
Zoning and Racial Segregation: Areas zoned exclusively for single-family housing have been shown to increase racial segregation and income inequality. This form of zoning is seen as a tool to maintain racial and economic divides, particularly segregating people of color and low-income individuals from predominantly white, affluent neighborhoods.
https://belonging.berkeley.edu/zoning-reform#:~:text=Single,white and are resource rich
Bay Area Housing Report: In the Bay Area, a correlation has been observed between the extent of single-family zoning and demographic composition. As single-family zoning becomes more prevalent, the white population in those areas tends to increase, while Black and Latinx populations decrease. This report underscores single-family zoning as a barrier to lower-income people of color and advocates for loosening restrictions on multi-unit housing
Blog
The rent is too damn high and as a result, a lot of people are busy struggling to pay for basic necessities instead of doing other things.
And you know what those other things are, on some level. Having fun, exercising, helping their children with math homework, investing in themselves, thinking about how to contribute to society.
So if the rent is too damn high, you can work towards a few good things:
- [Giving people money]
- [Lowering the rent]
- [Help them make money]
Of course, the devil is in the details. For example, you could lower rents by making it legal to build more housing, but a lot of people don't want that.
It still makes me feel good to work towards getting basic necessities to the people, to meditate on the project. It's honest work, contributing to society. Doing this helps me ground myself, and motivates me to work on my career (it's software engineering, but that's not relevant).
Windsor, Colorado
One of the few good people in Windsor followed me on Twitter. They gave me a free place to stay, which was great because I got disowned by my parents for being transgender.
So eventually I decided to try getting involved in local politics.
I was called an illegal immigrant, told to go back to Asia, told my people were infiltrating this country - and a bunch more naked and veiled slurs.
On the bright side, I found a few good people. With their help, I successfully pitched a policy that made the town just a little bit better.
I did what good people were supposed to do: turn the other cheek, even in the face of would-be Christians who viewed my people as evil interlopers. I educated people far more privileged and wealthy than me, for free. I made their lives better in the hopes that they would learn to love my people.
But, making their lives better felt like giving a handjob to a Klansman in exchange for skipping the next cross-burning rally.
You can read about it at this link below:
Denver, Colorado
A friend in Denver listened to my stories about Windsor. After their friends chimed in with their own stories about that place, they took pity on me. So he gave me a place to stay.
I lived in a house across the street from some friendly Muslims, and I'm a lot happier.
The governor of Colorado, Jared Polis, really likes my friend's memes. So much so that Jared was happy to attend a party hosted by him. I got to meet the governor, shake his hand, and ask him questions about policy.
The funny thing is that I spent a lot of time in Windsor telling my friends about how terrible the town was.
But the fact that I managed to get something done was impressive to a lot of people I admired, so someone vouched for me to get a volunteer stint on Mayor Mike Johnston's transition team.
Denver, Colorado Part II
I put that on my resume, which got me a pretty nice job doing tech support. The people there like me.
I'm moving in with another friend who really loves me, and loves what I do.
I'm even happier, now.
Housing Stuff
Liberals Have Lost Their Way on Housing (Slate)
Others are just living in the contradiction that they are nominally liberal on all the things—climate and immigration and health care and LGBTQ rights and all the good stuff, but they also have a nice home and do not want other people to live next to them. And that is not a coherent political philosophy. That’s just a person thinking they’re liberal but they are not liberal about a basic question, which is: “Do I want a nurse or a firefighter or a sanitation worker or a restaurant worker or an elderly individual or a disabled individual or a student to live near me?” And if the answer is “Well, sure, but only if they can afford this 1-acre lot,” then you’re not that progressive.
You Can't Have Affordability Without Density
Apartments Are Environmentalism (Seattle Times)
If you are standing in the way of policies that allow more homes in our cities, it’s time to turn in your environmentalist bona fides.
The Racist History Of Single-Family Zoning (KQED)
Single-family zoning makes it illegal for a community to build anything other than a single home on a single lot. That means no apartment buildings, condos or duplexes.
When cities first created neighborhoods where only single-family houses were allowed, it was about more than separating homes from apartments; it was about separating white families from everyone else.
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Contact Info
Email: standardvyang [@] gmail [dot] com
