Home Is Where the Urban Heart Is

Urban planners have tut-tutted for decades about sprawl, rightly blaming outward suburban creep for traffic congestion that fouls the air and turns commutes into agony. But what to do? Families buying on the fringes usually don’t want or need the low-income housing that government money builds in urban cores. Gentrified urban rehabs and condos also don’t meet most families’ needs.

That’s why the company being formed by former federal housing chief Henry Cisneros and Westwood-based developer Kaufman & Broad to build middle-class residential developments near city centers nationwide is so promising. Localities should do all they can to help projects like this find good sites of suitable size, then ease the zoning and permitting process. The builders, in turn, must keep their promises about putting up affordable homes aimed especially at underserved minority and immigrant families.

Cisneros says a sense of what the new company, American CityVista, intends can be found in Culver City, where developer Jeff Lee has built houses (more upscale than what Cisneros plans) on the lot of an old drive-in theater.

Cisneros and Bruce Karatz, CEO of Kaufman & Broad, are not aiming for ground-zero urban cores: They mention San Fernando and Sylmar, Anaheim and Fullerton. They want locations where services are available and where affordable, not-too-contaminated land for 50 or 100 homes might still be found.

They say they’ll seek families ready to buy a first house and hoping to stay close to jobs. Cisneros, who calls the project “what I want to do with the rest of my career,” has already been contacted by city officials suggesting sites. He is adamant in saying home prices will be affordable for families more or less at median income, without direct subsidy, in each city. “I intend to do it patiently,” he says, “and it won’t be the richest company in the world.”

If building urban, affordable single-family houses were easy, a lot of people would be doing it; this singular effort deserves praise and encouragement. If done right, it may provide a smart, market-oriented answer to sprawl.