(image courtersy Josh Levinger, twitter @jlev)
Robert Joseph: What are some of the historical factors that led to the limited housing affordability we see today in the Bay Area?
Gabriel Metcalf: In most places, people living in poverty have a hard time finding housing they can afford. But in the Bay Area, even people with middle-class jobs face an affordability crisis. The reason is simple: we stopped building housing. We have supply and demand out of whack. But the reasons behind that fact are complicated. The value change that happened in our society between the post-war, pro-growth boosterism of the 1950s and '60s and the NIMBYism ("Not In My Back Yard") of the 1970s was a profound cultural transformation that I don't think we fully understand yet.
At least some of it stems from the reality that city leaders in the post-war era did some terrible things with their power. Urban renewal and urban highways were national programs — there was an almost universal assumption that tearing down the old city meant progress. You also had cities losing population every single year after WWII. There was this deeply held belief that urban life was to be escaped from, so all the cities that are really expensive today were emptying out then. The low point in population was 1980, according to census numbers. For those who stayed, change came to be equated with destruction. For all of these reasons, there was a backlash against development.
Down-zonings didn't cause housing supply problems for a long time because the population loss meant few demand pressures. You could downzone without triggering displacement in the 1970s. You could save historical buildings without any negative impact on housing supply.
But then the whole world changed and cities started growing again. The problem is that we have locked in place the rules and culture from these early '70s preservation movements that today make it really difficult to add housing.
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