Culture Wars in Fullerton?
FFFF was sent a well-written and thought provoking essay regarding the issue of historic preservation, zoning used to defy Sacramento mandates, and of course freedom of expression. Apparently somebody is making a another attempt to establish a historic district in one of Fullerton’s older neighbor hoods.
This piece is pretty lengthy so I’m presenting it in installments.
Caught in a culture war;
When self determination and neighborhood
trust are at stake
The question of whether or not to approve a historic preservation layer over a neighborhood isn’t one that is new. This is the third fight, which in the past has included protests with pink lawn flamingos. Hells bells and all out, I didn’t mind wading into new waters to gain an understanding of this current push to put several neighborhoods under preservation layers, and how three new laws are shaping our city and its neighborhoods.
NIMBYs and YIMBYs
This is a culture war is between NIMBYs and YIMBYs (Not in My Backyard and Yes in My Backyard). Both are adept at crafting legislation that echo their ideologies. The struggle is between those don’t want any changes in their neighborhoods, and those who insist that the California Dream needs to evolve and that zoning needs to be changed in order to accommodate the needs of cities today. The foot soldiers for this war are embodied by the California Senate and the Assembly. Most of us wouldn’t self-identify as either a NIMBY or a YIMBY, but prefer the term neighbors. Culture wars start with a problem: Californiaʻs population of 39.4 million has resulted in a housing shortage. There aren’t enough places to rent, and the median price for housing in Orange County alone, is well beyond the reach of many. In Sacramento, new laws have been created, the bulk of them are partisan bills introduced and passed in the Newsom era. To make way for building, these new laws override existing municipal zoning combining egalitarian ideals with capitalism.
Re-zoning On Steroids: SB 330
The result of one side of the culture wars is marked by the emergence of high rise apartments, not only in Fullerton, but everywhere. These developments help cities meet a state-assigned number of new units to fulfill its Housing Element (Fullertonʻs HE has been set to 13,206). The law, SB 330, super charges the approval process and prevents cities from adopting new zoning laws that could serve as a barrier to development. Laws like SB 330 are part of the ʻBuilders Remedy,ʻ which applies to a section of the California code for cities who have yet to meet their quota. Present zoning regulations are moot, and developments for housing are planned. These projects get help from Federal economic stimulus plans intended to revitalize cities because they include affordable housing. Programs that provide funding and tax breaks to build new housing are applied for by developers, while cities get development fees and increased tax revenues. Since land is scarce, former commercial, freeway and railroad adjacent lands and urban infill are being developed. With a lower per-unit cost, and a higher ROI, high rises and new subdivisions that cover city blocks are being built for buyers, renters, and includes affordable and low income housing. Thereʻs a lot riding on this. The state is trying to create housing for all, help people avoid homelessness, fuel the economy with the creation of jobs, renew cities, and keep employers in California by producing affordable housing. Housing, jobs, and renewing cities are ways of affirming humanity.
I’m eager to see how historic preservation battles tie in to the crazy housing mandates.
I always thought it was just preservationists vs. leave-me-alone property rights people.
“I’m eager to see how historic preservation battles tie in to the crazy housing mandates.”
The status quo of housing unaffordability is what is crazy.
It’s all about conflicts created by law that give activists standing to sue to stop whatever they don’t like. Courts very often offer injunctions while it goes through the long painstaking process of figuring out what can be done and who is owed what. Injunctions are a form of disproportionate negative power. We make it far easier to stop things than to get anything done.
And the usage of these laws is generally a pretext. You get people suing often with no direct interest in the actual goal of the law, they just want to use the law to stop or delay (indefinitely) something else they don’t want.
In this case, historic preservation laws in conflict with housing mandate laws.
It’s just like using eminent domain or CEQA to stop a construction project coming to your town. Is it really just environmentalists using CEQA? Nope.
The charter city thing is more direct. The goal is to be able to ignore housing mandates based on court decisions coming down the pike that might.
I wouldn’t call this stuff “culture wars.” It’s more about what you want your city to look like, homeowners versus apartment dwellers, 5 story buildings and an interrupted skyline versus 1 story homes and not enough affordable places to live. I guess it only ends up being a culture war because you have the established people with homes butting heads with politicians trying to solve a problem on behalf of people trying to establish themselves. That can pit old versus young if there isn’t a lot of empathy and understanding among the established.
Be quiet.
No
UR so dumb. The only reason they don’t ban your comments like the Observer Sisters do is because you provide entertainment.
Legit historic preservation districts are generally protected from housing mandates. Fullerton has numerous neighborhoods that might qualify and should be pursued. The massive Soviet-style apartment blocks going up all over Fullerton have forever destroyed the city’s character.
Utter bullshit.
The truth is most people aren’t NIMBY or YIMBY, they are YIYBY, Yes In Your Back Yard. Very few people wouldn’t support more housing as long as it doesn’t cost oneself anything. Logically, it makes perfect sense.
Agreed. Philanthropy on other people’s dime is the guiding principle of boohoo boohooing.
The housing market is broken, but some people are fine with it because they profit from it or they’re unaffected by it because they already won the game of musical chairs.
You have NIMBYs and you have empathetic YIMBYs and you have everyone else who is getting screwed by a broken system that isn’t acceptable and will not fix itself. You can call them whatever names you want but they just want a solution and you couldn’t give a fuck.
Your head is broken, that’s for sure. There’s nothing wrong with the housing market, there’s a problem with the expectation that everybody deserves his own house.
Well, the only thing is that the YIMBYs seem to have been extremely successful getting thru every piece of legislation that will forever change the landscape.
That, and well…. they also make a damned fine cuppa coffee.