Undoing the Racist Roadblock Standing in the Way of Affordable Housing in California
A racist legacy at the heart of California’s affordable housing crisis has been embedded in the state constitution for more than seventy years. That shameful history could be reversed in a couple of years.
On August 31, amidst a slew of other last minute legislative actions, the Senate approved a bill placing a measure to repeal Article 34 of the State Constitution on the 2024 ballot.
The background on this legacy involves a 1950 Amendment to the State Constitution sponsored by the forerunner of the California Association of Realtors requiring voter approval before public housing could be built.
From the Los Angeles Times:
But the campaign, which coincided with the start of the Korean War, was about more than giving voters a say. In the Realtors’ internal newsletter, Charles B. Shattuck, the organization’s legislative committee chairman, wrote that public housing threatened capitalism.
“If you value your property, if you hold liberty dear, if you believe in the dignity of the individual, if you love this land of the free and the home of the brave, if you desire to stop the enemy of socialism that is gnawing at the vitals of America from within, the ballot box is your weapon, the one and only means by which our great Republic will be preserved and improved,” Shattuck wrote in November 1950.
Newspaper ads paid for by the Realtors also blamed “minority pressure groups” for pushing public housing. At the time, the Realtors’ Code of Ethics included a provision barring agents from integrating neighborhoods on the basis of “race or nationality” if doing so would be “clearly detrimental to property values.”
Efforts to repeal Article 34 have been tried and failed over the years. The characterization of public housing as the same as squalor–typically accompanied by articles about failed post-WWll projects in New York and Chicago– has been a mainstay of media accounts on this subject.
From another article in the Los Angeles Times, which thanks to reporter Liam Dillan, has covered this topic in numerous articles over the past decade::
On three occasions, state lawmakers have asked voters to rescind or weaken Article 34. In 1974, a repeal failed by 24 percentage points. Six years later, legislators put forward a proposition so that residents could appeal a decision to build public housing instead of holding an automatic vote. That measure lost by an even greater margin. Then, in 1993, lawmakers tried again with a proposition that would have kept Article 34 on the books, but exempted almost all projects from its rules.
This time, the measure was supported by the California Assn. of Realtors — the group behind the original push for Article 34. It didn’t matter. Opponents, including a state senator from northern Los Angeles and an Orange County assemblyman, contended in the official voter guide that Article 34 was a success because it prevented public housing from being built.
“Why should we trust politicians and special interests to protect our local neighborhoods and spend our tax dollars wisely?” they wrote.
Nearly 60% voted no
The legal justification for the Constitutional amendment in 1950 was supposedly that low-income housing projects were infrastructure similar to roads or schools and this subject to taxpayer approval. Because it didn’t specify any specific groups that might be impacted by such a restriction, the Supreme Court upheld the measure in 1971.
While Article 34 is just one of the tools used by California communities over the years to block housing construction, it remains a road block for communities willing to build where commercial development doesn’t pencil out.
A oft-amended 1967 law signed by then-Gov. Reagan requiring cities and counties to incorporate the housing needs of all economic segments of the community in their planning has been ignored or (in more recent years, defied). It continues to this day.
Earlier this summer Coronado, Lemon Grove, Imperial Beach, and Solana Beach lost a legal battle over new housing guidelines from the San Diego Regional Association of Governments (SANDAG). And, yes, these battles have as much to do with racism as the publicly proclaimed justifications. They’d like the “help” to live elsewhere.
From an article about the failure of the legislature to stimulate housing construction in the Los Angeles Times:
More than two-thirds of California’s coastal communities have adopted measures — such as caps on population or housing growth, or building height limits — aimed at limiting residential development, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office. A UC Berkeley study of California’s local land-use regulations found that every growth-control policy a city puts in place raises housing costs by as much as 5% there…
…To avoid complying, local governments have over the years asked state lawmakers to, among other things, count prison beds and student dormitories as low-income housing and allow cities that place foster children in their communities to reduce the number of low-income homes they need to plan for.
Researching this topic makes me realize just how long this “housing shortage” has been simmering in California. Between exclusion by zoning and misguided slow growth environmentalism, there exists an all-but-insurmountable blockade against the kinds of developments that directly or indirectly enable affordable housing. And, of course, minorities are the group most impacted by such policies.
The for profit housing “market” is increasingly not accessible for people in California; it can’t be, thanks to a system where government entities are dependent on the fees and taxes generated by upper end development.
Low-income or even moderate-income housing is treated as a lever to induce density that enables increased profitability for developers, who generally have no other incentives to broaden the appeal of their properties.
Undoing Article 34 opens the door for other kinds of developments, including social housing, which is built with public funds, managed by resident cooperative and/or non profits, and structured in such a manner that cash flow ensures ongoing maintenance and upgrades.
Rather than building “poor people’s” housing, social housing in Europe is available to all but the highest income groups, and its virtues as a community asset are a point of pride for local politicians, rather than downtrodden tracts used as backdrops during election cycles.
How housing gets built doesn’t require a one-size-fits-all approach. (In fact, I’d argue that is exactly what we have right now). What works in one community may not work in another, and that’s okay, as long as problems arising are treated as opportunities.
Legislation (AB2053) introduced by Assembly member Alex Lee would enable a financial and bureaucratic structure in California making social housing, subject to some stringent definitions (revenue neutrality, etc.), a realistic alternative, especially for local governments looking for a pathway to develop properties on publicly-owned land near transit corridors.
This bill fizzled out at the committee level this year. Hopefully, the effort to get Californians to understand that there’s a wrong that needs to be righted in 2024 will pave the way for legislation like this to get serious debate.
We’re in the middle of a crap blizzard of advertising for this year’s ballot propositions right now, so I’m just asking readers to keep this in mind as we move past the midterms. Repealing Article 34 wouldn’t have made it through the legislature if there wasn’t a nascent political coalition ready to support the cause.
I’m convinced passage can be achieved as long as awareness of the amendment’s historical roots remains in the public consciousness. However, it’s also likely that our state’s “we’re-not-racist” NIMBYs will organize some highly charged rhetoric designed to “whitewash” the racism out of their intentions.
Here’s a video explaining how social housing happened in Austria (it’s only one model, don’t get scared by the word socialist) by the Gravel Institute.
Email me at WritetoDougPorter@gmail.com