Letters to the Editor: Ending single-family zoning without improving infrastructure is a terrible idea
To the editor: Several months ago, the aged water main on my street broke, leaving many homes without water for hours. The main was patched, not replaced. In the hottest summer on record, how many neighborhoods, like mine, suffered blackouts? ("Watch out, NIMBYs. Newsom just dumped single-family zoning," editorial, Sept. 17)
And now Sacramento wants to add density to my single-family neighborhood?
Nowhere in your editorial lauding the end of single-family zoning in California did you mention that nothing in Senate Bills 9 and 10 requires developers to build affordable housing. Where are the studies that show a glut of market-rate housing will force landlords to lower rents? Los Angeles already has a glut of market-rate housing, yet I don't see rents being lowered.
Nothing in SB 9 or 10 provides for new or updated infrastructure. There will be more cars on the streets, since there will be less parking available in these units and no increase in the use of public transportation, as people tend to buy a car as soon as they can.
SB 9 and 10 are really just gifts to developers.
Lisa Seidman, Sherman Oaks
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To the editor: I do not dispute the need for more affordable housing in California. However, I question the logic of some of your predictions of the effects that SB 9 and 10 will have.
You state that we cannot build enough housing in the places we need it most, such as close to good schools. Having worked in South Gate schools for more than 35 years, I am not sure the answer to solving school equity is to just build more housing near "good schools."
As the population of South Gate increased, it put a strain on schools in South Gate, to the point that our schools were among the first to go year-round.
If we increase the population that lives by schools without accounting for the effect that will have on the schools, will these schools then become overcrowded also? At some point, that is going to have an effect on these "good schools."
I am not sure what the answer to the housing crisis is, but I pray that developers keep in mind the effect that more people will have on a neighborhood's infrastructure.
Mary-Janice Rodriguez, Long Beach
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
