Zoning Mutual Sense

Kate Kershaw Downing has posted a worthy letter of resignation from the Palo Alto Housing commission, that seems to endure going viral.

Palo Alto is absurdly expensive. People who desire to come upwards hither for jobs can't afford to alive anywhere nearby.  What to create virtually it?

 I receive got repeatedly made recommendations to the Council to expand the housing provide inwards Palo Alto as well as hence that together amongst our neighboring cities who are already adding housing, nosotros tin get-go to brand a dent inwards the jobs-housing imbalance that causes housing prices throughout the Bay Area to spiral out of control. Small steps similar allowing 2 floors of housing instead of 1 inwards mixed purpose developments, enforcing minimum density requirements as well as hence that developers build apartments instead of penthouses, legalizing duplexes, easing restrictions on granny units, leveraging the residential parking permit programme to experiment amongst housing for people who don’t desire or quest 2 cars, as well as allowing single-use areas similar the Stanford shopping catch to add together housing on acme of shops (or offices), would become a long fashion inwards adding desperately needed housing units spell maintaining the graphic symbol of our neighborhoods as well as preserving historic structures throughout.

She equally good warns

 If things decease on going equally they are, yes, Palo Alto’s streets volition await but equally they did decades ago, but its inhabitants, spirit, as well as feel of community volition endure unrecognizable. H5N1 1 time thriving metropolis volition plough into a hollowed out museum.  

I works life Ms. Downing's missive of the alphabet noteworthy inwards that it did non include the common Bay Area nostrums -- the authorities must build "affordable housing," freeze rents, ban novel construction (yes, this is proposed) or otherwise receive got counterproductive actions. Those steps tin save to a greater extent than or less existing low-income people at high cost -- creating a unlike variety of museum, actually -- but brand matters fifty-fifty worse for people who desire to motion hither to work. Few local voices appreciate that expanding provide tin create a lot to lower prices, as well as heighten historic catamenia as well as economical diversity.

As the send service notes, the Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution on the same letter. Alex points out but how much nosotros receive got all lost holding rights.