[URBAN NOTE] "The Activist Group Suing the Suburbs for Bigger Buildings"
Bloomberg's Patrick Clark writes about the San Francisco area group that has been suing suburban municipalities for blocking much-needed construction. I have to say that I strongly agree with this goal: Cities need housing if they are to function.
In a speech last month, Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Jason Furman blamed zoning restrictions-local land-use rules governing things like how tall buildings can grow-for the lack of affordable housing, lost economic productivity, and rising inequality across the U.S.
On Tuesday, a San Francisco activist named Sonja Trauss took Furman's argument to the streets, filing a lawsuit in Contra Costa County (Calif.) to fight what she sees as a lost opportunity to build more housing.
Trauss's organization, the San Francisco Bay Area Renters Federation (yes, SFBARF), is suing the City of Lafayette, a Bay Area suburb of about 25,000, to block plans to build 44 single-family homes on a plot of land once slated for a 315-unit apartment complex. Her argument relies on a three-decade-old California law intended to check local governments’ ability to reduce the density of certain construction projects. Called the Housing Accountability Act, the law has been used successfully by developers of affordable housing who have had their projects blocked, Trauss said, but never by an advocacy group advocating for greater density as a public good.
"Everyone can agree that we should be building more," she said. "They just want it to be somewhere else."
Trauss, 34, is a former high school math teacher who launched SFBARF last year to advocate for residential development projects. In San Francisco, where the median rent for a two-bedroom apartment is approaching $5,000 a month, there's a common-sense reason to oppose land-use laws-there's simply not enough housing, and it's driving up home prices and rents, especially for new arrivals. Earlier this year, she raised $40,000-much of it from tech workers-so that she could quit her day job and run the organization full time.
In a speech last month, Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Jason Furman blamed zoning restrictions-local land-use rules governing things like how tall buildings can grow-for the lack of affordable housing, lost economic productivity, and rising inequality across the U.S.
On Tuesday, a San Francisco activist named Sonja Trauss took Furman's argument to the streets, filing a lawsuit in Contra Costa County (Calif.) to fight what she sees as a lost opportunity to build more housing.
Trauss's organization, the San Francisco Bay Area Renters Federation (yes, SFBARF), is suing the City of Lafayette, a Bay Area suburb of about 25,000, to block plans to build 44 single-family homes on a plot of land once slated for a 315-unit apartment complex. Her argument relies on a three-decade-old California law intended to check local governments’ ability to reduce the density of certain construction projects. Called the Housing Accountability Act, the law has been used successfully by developers of affordable housing who have had their projects blocked, Trauss said, but never by an advocacy group advocating for greater density as a public good.
"Everyone can agree that we should be building more," she said. "They just want it to be somewhere else."
Trauss, 34, is a former high school math teacher who launched SFBARF last year to advocate for residential development projects. In San Francisco, where the median rent for a two-bedroom apartment is approaching $5,000 a month, there's a common-sense reason to oppose land-use laws-there's simply not enough housing, and it's driving up home prices and rents, especially for new arrivals. Earlier this year, she raised $40,000-much of it from tech workers-so that she could quit her day job and run the organization full time.