The tenor of the latest WJ column by Josh VanderBerg is disturbing [The stealth conservatism of Oak Park, Viewpoints, June 10]. He decries Oak Parkers, whom he says “clock left to far left” with purportedly “progressive values,” but are secretly conservative on numerous policy matters. As evidence, along with their occasional gripes over lesser issues, he lumps the enormously monumental and outsized issue of single-family zoning. He chastises the “crushing conservatism” of opposition to all of his progressive ideas, including abolition of that zoning.
I’ve been to large and small cities all over the U.S., Canada, South America, Europe and Asia, and rural communities, too, and universally seen vast tracts of single-family housing. Apparently, large numbers of people worldwide prefer, as I do, the life of such settings. For many it is the quintessential American dream.
But Mr. VanderBerg says (in effect): No. no. no. You can’t want that, and still be progressive. You “clock” yourself as left or far left, but you’re not — you’re conservative. To which I say: “Sez who?”
I consider myself even farther left than “far,” and a progressive, too, welcoming real solutions. But I also have a strong libertarian streak, and don’t see anything conservative about simply liking my single-family neighborhood and having, with others, the option to choose it.
There is a clear tone of condescending moral superiority over those who differ with him in what he has elsewhere called his “bold vision for Oak Park” of progressiveness whose benefits he says he has explained until he is “blue in the face.” That’s no way to convince anyone.
The letter to WJ by Blaise Denton, meanwhile, supporting the zoning ban is misleading by what it leaves out [In support of ending single-family zoning, Viewpoints, June 10].
While he correctly quotes the abstract of the first cited article, to the effect that relaxing density limits is the most effective way to increase housing supply and reduce both rents and house prices, he omits the next two sentences: “However, adopting multifamily zoning or relaxing height regulations alone has little effect” on either supply or rents, and, “Moreover, in each land-use relaxation scenario where rents fall, house prices also fall” — a result more startlingly stated in the paper’s conclusion: “While lowering housing costs … may help first-time homebuyers and lower-income renters, it comes at the expense of … current owners.” It ends with the caution that even then, “very low-income households may not find housing affordable.”
I have searched the second cited article in vain to support Denton’s implication that it concludes “single family zoning was mostly implemented to maintain racial segregation and continues to perform that function,” and have found, instead, assertions inconsistent with that. While the article, a “working paper … for discussion and comment … not peer-reviewed,” certainly studies that question and finds some evidence to support it in the limited cases of Chicago and Seattle, it notes the severe paucity of research beyond those large cities, and “highlight[s] the key gaps in our understanding of the role of urban and suburban zoning in fostering segregation within cities and across metropolitan areas.”
Generalities to Oak Park may therefore not hold true: “less well understood, are the motivations underlying the adoption of zoning ordinances by municipalities over the twentieth century.” And research on the post-WWII era “has often failed to establish a clear causal link between zoning and segregation.”
Both lengthy papers make clear that the issues are far more complex than Denton lets on.
Frank Stachyra is an old school “lefty” and a 50-year resident in an Oak Park single-family home.