Livable California is now the most recognized brand among a class of new groups protesting the state’s housing movements. The groups organize, among other things, neighborhood associations and conduct research that finds the idea of a shortage exaggerated. (This charge conflicts with the amount of research on the subject, the low per capita construction rate, and the plethora of illegal and overcrowded homes.)
Many of its most active members come from wealthy enclaves like Marin, but the struggle to maintain local control over housing attracts a more diverse group than the stereotype of a wealthy, suburban NIMBY suggests. In California and across the country, activists fighting urban gentrification often team up with suburban homeowners concerned about development to oppose broad zoning reforms. Even when these groups do not agree on housing policies, they often choose to let those decisions be made at the city or neighborhood level, where the political sphere is small enough for a group of volunteers to be effective.
“Community activists are personally organizing,” said Isaiah Madison, 26, and Black, a resident of Los Angeles’ historic Black Leimert Park neighborhood — and a member of the board of Livable California. “But when you bring it to the state, you’re just a number. There are so many problems, and so much bureaucracy and politics and money, that the community is lost.”
Over the course of several interviews, many of the most active homeowners expressed a sense of upper-middle class decline. It seems unfair to them that people who did exactly what society told them to do – buy a house, get involved in their neighborhood – are now being asked to accept major changes in their environment.
Most of all, they are infuriated how an epithet like “NIMBY” can reduce someone who cares about their neighborhood to a cartoon. Yes, they are the people fighting development. These are also the people who make and distribute lawn signs. Who attend city meetings late at night to ask probing questions about bids on the city’s dog-catch contract. Who organize the block party and help start library programs that are self-evident to everyone.
“The state is mad at trying to make all these cities their enemies,” said Maria Pavlou Kalban, who sits on the board of directors of the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association and recently founded a statewide homeowners and neighborhood group, United Neighbors. called. “These are people who are really serious about trying to answer the question of ‘Where do our children live?'”
However, when the conversation shifts to solutions, the conundrum of local control resurfaces. In an interview, Ms. Kalban outlined a plan to build higher-density homes on busy corridors, which sounds perfectly reasonable. It also sounds like the row houses that Mr. Richardson has been trying to build since 2004.
