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View Winners → Opinion Oct 29, 2020
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Share This Article: Single-family homes in the Sylmar neighborhood of Los Angeles. Photo Samuel J. Kirby via Wikimedia Commons By Adam Briones | Special for CalMatters At the start of the last legislative session, Californians were assured that 2020 would be the year our representatives addressed our extreme housing shortage.
Early on, both houses introduced 15 bills in packages that were promising, if not the bold reforms needed to fully solve the crisis or close the racial wealth gap. But instead of even these modest fixes, in the end only three bills, each offering important but minor changes, made it to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk due to fierce opposition.
Patricia McCloskey addressed the Republican National Convention months after she and her husband waved guns at Black Lives Matter protesters. She echoed recent comments by President Donald Trump saying that Democrats “want to abolish the suburbs all together by ending single-family home zoning” and that this would bring “crime, lawlessness and low-quality apartments into now thriving suburban neighborhoods.”
McCloskey’s comments are alarmingly similar to those from affluent California neighborhood associations and advocates who have opposed policies that would even incrementally impact single-family zoning. Fear of people of color moving into […]
