An Opportunity for Creating Community within Single-Family Fabric
Sixty-nine percent of housing in America is single-family housing—the epitome of separating people.
The new Senate Bill 9 (SB 9) in California encourages infill and more affordable housing development. This will result in a more walkable towns—making places close to each other and allowing commerce to prosper and community to flourish. SB 9 reintroduces a more historical type of land use where people fit into affordable housing—literally stitching it right back into the fabric of the town.
Nevada City, the town I live in, had 10,000-16,000 residents in 1900, according to historical records. And it was one square mile then. Now, it’s two square miles, and right at 3,000 residents. The town once had a hardware store, 2 drug stores, a grocery store, but now it has none of that. Single family housing took over, leaving the city underpopulated and unaffordable. Supply & demand is real.
Now, thanks to SB 9, things can start to shift back. Imagine in this elegant little neighborhood you add a common house and clustered parking, and soon you’re well on your way to a high-functioning neighborhood. SB 9 allows owners to subdivide their lots into 2 lots. Then it allows each lot to add on an accessory dwelling unit (ADU), sometimes known as a granny flat or a mother-in-law unit.
These additional units will do a great deal for the neighborhood.
First of all, the kids who grew up in this town might be able to afford to move back to town. The housekeeper that I used to have would like to live in the town that she grew up in, Nevada City, instead of Roseville, which is 50 miles away. Almost all of our service workers, baristas, restaurant workers, and more, currently drive from considerable distances to work in town. So infill will also mitigate the ridiculous traffic into our town every morning, and lessen global warming.
Some of the towns around San Diego have the same problem, so we are proposing a cohousing community in Ramona, San Diego County, that not only provides entry level housing there, but will also ultimately helps revitalize that charming town, both economically and culturally, as young people who work in the town will be able to afford to live and stay in the town.
I suspect that Nevada City will never have a population of 10,000 people again, but it might get to 3,500 someday which would be a step in the right direction when it comes to people having an affordable place to stay in our town and other suburban towns like Ramona, and many more.