Giving Compass' Take:
- A report from the Othering & Belonging Institute reveals how single-family zoning ordinances in the Bay Area contribute to segregation and pervasive systemic racism.
- What are other examples of housing and urban planning that contribute to racist structures? What can we do to upend single-family zoning and promote racial residential integration across the United States?
- Read more about the continued presence of segregationist structures all over the country.
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Opening up restrictive communities to multiplex housing may be a key strategy to promote racial residential integration in the Bay Area, new research from UC Berkeley's Othering & Belonging Institute released Tuesday suggests.
The report reveals the correlations between neighborhoods with restrictive, singe-family zoning, non-single-family zoning, and their levels of segregation.
The illuminating set of maps of 66 cities across six Bay Area counties shows the regions and proportions of the cities that are zoned for single-family homes, other residential zoning, and non-residential zones.
It shows some fluctuation but overall as the proportion of single-family zoning increases, so does its white population, while the Black and Latinx populations decrease.
Because single-family zoning is a barrier to lower-income people of color, the report advocates for the loosening of restrictions on multi-unit housing as a first step in a set of remedies to the Bay Area's widespread problem of segregation.
"The prevalence and over-abundance of this type of restrictive zoning is a direct impediment to the development of affordable housing and certain types of housing, including dense, multi-family housing, that make integration feasible and segregation more difficult to sustain," the report states. "Without addressing this problem, an integration agenda is out of reach."
Additionally, the report recommends a set of policies which data shows can promote or preserve integration when properly implemented.
Those include: the adoption of specific rent control and rent stabilization policies depending on the context of an individual city to prevent displacement from integrated communities; mobility strategies that open up predominantly white communities to people of color; inclusionary zoning ordinances and statewide fair share laws that mandate a specific level of economic integration; and affordable housing policies and direct subsidies such as housing vouchers.
Read the full article about single-family zoning at Othering & Belonging Institute.