Four Tips for Advocates of Abundant Housing
Civility would go a long way toward building desperately needed living space in California — and elsewhere.
Keep going.
Photographer: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg
Slowly but surely, the political climate in California is shifting to encourage more housing in the cities where skyrocketing prices are putting rents and homeownership out of the reach of all but the wealthiest residents.
Last week’s election of London Breed as mayor of San Francisco was a headline win for abundant housing. “We have to build more housing. We have to build more housing. We have to build more housing, and I will be relentless in my pursuit to get the job done,” Breed said in her victory speech. In a post-election interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, she cited her support for more housing as a decisive issue in her favor. Unlike her rivals, she backed a state bill, ultimately unsuccessful, that would require cities to allow new multi-unit housing near bus and rail transit stops. Her housing platform expressed the radical notion that “supply and demand are real.”