[dropcap size=big]C[/dropcap]alifornia’s zoning laws for building housing are a mess. There are 533 individual cities and counties in the state, and they all have different zoning laws from each other, a lot of them designed from the 1920s to the 1980s to try as best they could to excluded lower income people from entering certain neighborhoods.
This boils down to communities resisting new housing construction, and it shows: California is ranked 49th only ahead of Utah in U.S. states' per capita supply of housing. We're just not building enough to meet demand, which is pushing people out of California or onto the streets.
Senate Bill 50, proposed by state Sen. Scott Weiner (D-San Francisco), would have tried to alleviate some of that mess by requiring that some cities across the state lift their restrictive zoning ordinances. It would have allowed for the construction of more apartment buildings, duplexes, and other multifamily housing units in single-family zoned neighborhoods, especially near transit centers or so-called jobs rich areas.
But late last week the bill was killed in the state’s Senate Appropriations Committee. It will have to be brought back and voted on next year.