Planners across the Bay Area promote affordable housing, homeless housing and high-density housing near transit. But a third of residents say, Not in my backyard, according to a new poll.
Despite sky-high housing costs, one-third of the region’s residents oppose building significant quantities of new homes, the San Jose Mercury News reported, citing a recent poll.
The survey by the Bay Area News Group and Joint Venture Silicon Valley shows there’s potent pushback to the notion the region should build its way out of its housing crisis.
A clear indicator someone is likely to oppose new housing, according to the poll: They already own a home. The way to make that opposition grow stronger: Tell them the housing will be nearby.
Opposition grows stronger when talk turns to what kinds of construction advocates say are most needed: Affordable housing, housing for homeless people and high-density housing around transit.
The entrenched opposition, known as “Not In My Backyard” or NIMBY, helps drive local and state policies that either support the resistance or seek to break its influence.
“The folks who have the most political power, who are the loudest, are oftentimes your affluent homeowners,” David Garcia, policy director for UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation, told the Mercury News. “And so it creates challenges for lawmakers who would like to pursue pro-housing policies, but have to answer to this very loud slice of their constituency.”
The online poll surveyed 1,628 registered voters in the five core Bay Area counties earlier this month.
Some 92 percent of respondents identified the cost of housing as a very serious issue. When asked if they supported building “significant quantities” of new homes of all kinds to bring down costs, 52 percent agreed while 32 percent disagreed. The rest said they didn’t know.
Older, White and affluent residents were less likely to support homebuilding than younger residents, people of color and lower-income earners, groups that bear the brunt of high housing costs. Some 60 percent of Black respondents favored more building compared to 45 percent of White respondents.
But the largest gap in support for more housing was between renters and homeowners. Of the renters, 66 percent favored much more housing and 21 percent didn’t. Of the homeowners, 42 percent favored it and 39 percent didn’t.
The poll found 44 percent of respondents oppose state laws that dictate to local governments which housing projects they must approve, while 56 percent support them. Homeowner resistance is stronger, with 51 percent opposing such laws.
“It’s a profound irony,” said Russell Hancock, president of Joint Venture, a public-private partnership focused on civic issues. “I have mine, but I don’t want you to have yours. That’s really what it says.”
For decades, homeowners have been at the forefront of housing resistance, pressuring big cities and suburban counties to block or delay new projects, and pushing rules that discourage dense development and increase building costs.
That’s why the Bay Area has some of the most expensive home prices in the country, experts say, with the median cost of a single-family house reaching $1.1 million in August. And it’s why nearly a quarter of the region’s renters spend more than half their income to pay for housing.
— Dana Bartholomew
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