The zoning code that Lakewood passed last year will allow our housing market to better fit the emerging needs of our community. Families living in Lakewood are smaller than they used to be and buying that first home is out of reach for more and more people. The share of homeownership in the U.S. by first home buyers has hit an all time low of 21% while the median age of the first-time home buyer has risen to 40. Lakewood is dominated by expensive single-family homes at a time when we need more affordability and greater availability of less expensive starter home options like duplexes and townhomes.
What Lakewood mainly changed was simply to allow small residential structures to be split into multiple units, while implementing a new 50% green space requirement and maintaining tight restrictions on size, height, setbacks and other design aspects that affect the look and feel of a neighborhood. Despite claims made by campaigns that want to repeal this new zoning code, examples from Minneapolis and Portland, Oregon, show us that the zoning reforms Lakewood adopted can truly help with affordability. Furthermore, we can learn from failed attempts to legislate housing affordability in California that ham-handed mandates in housing policy are not productive if they stifle overall supply more than they create affordable options.
Yard signs have been widely distributed claiming the new zoning code is “radical” and driven by “corporate greed.” Other signs make absurdly false claims that the new code will result in bulldozing of neighborhoods. Widespread Nextdoor posts try to characterize the ordinary Lakewood residents working on the “no” campaign as being corrupt outsiders or shadowy developers…