California housing crunch: Is the answer to end single-family zoning? – March 8, 2021
Now famous as a bastion of liberal politics, the Northern California enclave of Berkeley established a first-of-its-kind policy in 1916 that prohibited multifamily housing on residential land. City planners at the time cast the regulation as a preemptive move to protect neighborhoods from “the intrusion of the less desirable and floating renter class.”
The restrictions served to segregate minority tenants from white homeowners. And as cities and suburbs followed this pattern nationwide, single-family zoning contributed to an affordable housing shortage.
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