How Cities and Towns Fight the New Housing They Desperately Need

This New York Times article written by Connor Dougherty highlights the town of Lafayette, California, a wealthy suburb in the San Francisco Bay Area. The article describes how members of the community in Lafayette vehemently opposed a 300-unit apartment development within a few blocks from the commuter rail station that met all the dimensional requirements of the town’s zoning code. Not only did these community groups oppose the project, they were actually successful in preventing it from being built ultimately through litigation against the developer.

How are community members able to stop a development that adds housing units to a town that has a massive new housing shortage? The article points out that the community processes in many cities and towns, particularly ones where housing prices are rapidly rising, are inherently flawed. Too much power is given to the members of the community that oppose new development projects. In some instances their influence is built into the process and in others their power comes from the ability to sue the town or the developer to try and prevent the project from being built. Why should the current members of a community have the overwhelming say or power in whether a project gets built or not? What about the voices and opinions of the future would-be residents of the building to be built? These future residents of the community of course do not get any say in the conversation, but theoretically have the most at stake by the project coming to fruition.

Building more housing won’t solve the housing crisis on its own; however, it is indisputable that a failure to create more housing will ultimately lead to prices continuing to rise.