Letters to the Editor: The neighborhoods we’ll lose if we end single-family zoning

To the editor: This quest to dismantle historic single-family neighborhoods in the name of housing affordability and access is misguided. As pointed out by Chris Jones, one of those featured in the article who is opposed to the proposal in Sacramento to undo that city’s zoning, the effort should be to make all neighborhoods desirable. (“In a first for California, Sacramento poised to allow apartments in single-family home neighborhoods,” Feb. 10)

The picture on the front page is misleading. That neighborhood already has density, so yes, multi-unit housing might be appropriate, and the area may actually be currently zoned for density. What should be shown instead is what will be lost with this density proposal: beautiful, old, architecturally interesting single-family homes.

Legislation meant to do away with or significantly scale back single-family zoning is setting up an unnecessary zero-sum game. Let’s hope people wake up and realize what is being lost for potentially very little gain.

Emily Loughran, Los Angeles

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To the editor: I am a lifelong Democrat and I appreciate single-family neighborhoods for all the reasons people want to live in them.

The effort to destroy single-family neighborhoods is a political misadventure of the so-called progressives, who apparently have not digested the electoral college map sufficiently to realize that cramming more and more people into California is a recipe to ensure continued outsized political power for the rural states that gave us the previous president.

If progressives don’t mind forcing us to lose trees, yards, greenery, peace and quiet, they might at least consider the broader political implications of not recognizing that out-migration from California and other high-cost states helped save us from four more years of Donald Trump. Next time we might not be so fortunate.

Catherine Rich, Los Angeles