by Leila Trieu Brannan

As a fourth-year architecture student at UC Berkeley, I’ve been exploring how building forms and layouts can influence feelings, experiences, and lives, as well as how underlying systems lead the field of architecture to be unrepresentative of the vast diversity of the country. Through this, I’ve learned about historical housing policy that has greatly affected communities of color and continues to today: single-family zoning. During my research, I’ve been disillusioned by Berkeley’s role, both the university’s and city’s, and actions that harm student and residential communities. It's hard to unlink the university from the city as they are intertwined in their roles in power and housing discrimination. Berkeley has played a major role in popularizing racial and economic segregation through zoning laws, which affects housing affordability today. 

Who defines zoning? 

City planners divide land and designate specific areas for different land uses through zoning. The spaces many people experience around town, such as stores, libraries, parks, and residences, only exist where they are because of a city’s zoning code and maps. But when did zoning begin and who decides where these spaces are? When we look back to the early 1900s, we see substantial evidence that cities and other municipalities drew these lines in part to create and maintain racial and economic segregation. These segregationist goals of the original zoning codes persist and have become entrenched in housing and city planning across the state and the country to this day.  

Despite its reputation as a progressive space today, single-family zoning was created in Berkeley in 1916 by a developer named Duncan McDuffie. The developer was responsible for the construction of the Claremont Hotel and wanted to establish the surrounding neighborhoods as a racially segregated space for white people, excluding people of color.  Not only did the homes developed in the Claremont and Elmwood neighborhoods by McDuffie have explicitly racist covenants written into their deeds, but the developer targeted the establishment of a Black-owned dance hall in the neighborhood, which he prevented through zoning rules he lobbied for. McDuffie said that the presence of communities of color in the neighborhood would “lower property values” of the Claremont and Elmwood areas. The Sierra Club, an environmentalist organization which McDuffie once led, in 2021 described how he and city planners supported “single-family zoning as a clever work around” to evade the fact that explicit racial zoning had been made illegal.  

Around the same time as McDuffie was at work in Berkeley, the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated explicit racial zoning so that “if a white property owner wanted to sell his or her property to an African American, the government could not prevent it,” as George Fatheree describes. However, creating rules that restrict what can be built to larger homes for one family with large yards, which were thus more expensive,  served as a workaround. While often justified for other reasons, the original core values of single-family zoning have always been economic and racial segregation, and this exclusionary zoning practice spread throughout the United States.  

Single-family zoning is segregation 

We can see how segregation continues today and how single-family zoning makes it harder to buy and build affordable homes. A single-family zone only allows one house, occupied by one family, to be built per plot of land – often requiring that plot of land to be a certain minimum size – and its price can create barriers that prevent lower-income families from purchasing homes.  

This economic exclusion used the racial wealth gap against Black and Latino families, who have consistently lower incomes and fewer opportunities for wealth building than whites, to segregate neighborhoods and prevent communities of color from building wealth. Phrases like “preserving neighborhood character” have been frequently thrown around in the same vein of thinly veiled racism. The intentional exclusion of people of color and low-income people from single family zones resulted in these families residing in different neighborhoods where zoning allowed for denser housing like apartment buildings.  

This historical exclusion of people of color from single-family neighborhoods went hand in hand with discriminatory bank lending practices and systemic disinvestment. In the 1930s, the government partnered with banks to create maps listing certain areas as either “desirable” or “risky” for mortgage loans, a practice known as “redlining.”  The areas deemed desirable for investment were in white, single-family neighborhoods, which were color-coded green, whereas the red-coded, or redlined, “risky” areas were predominantly communities of color. This had the effect of further increasing property values in these white, single-family zones, while the neighborhoods where banks were willing to lend were the neighborhoods where people of color couldn’t buy. Although redlining was later made illegal, the legacy of economic and housing discrimination persists. Single-family zoning contributes to disinvestment in places where people of color were forced to live and denied opportunities for generational wealth to build.  

How does single family zoning impact housing? 

When we look for the effects of single-family zoning today, we can understand it within the ongoing history of racial segregation in the United States and the housing crisis we currently face.  As CCB’s recent report, “The Missing Middle,” noted, since 1990, California home prices have risen nearly eight times as fast as Californians’ incomes, creating a massive affordability crisis. Single-family homes are the most expensive type of housing to purchase and develop but remain the most common housing option available.  

As Adam Briones and Robert Apodaca described for CalMatters, “Zoning regulations that only permit single-family homes force builders to prioritize larger homes that are by design more expensive, effectively reserving homeownership for wealthier, and primarily white, Californians who have more generational wealth and opportunity.”  The cost of this private land alone drives up the cost of purchasing a home. It is easier and more economically reliable for housing developers to carry out single-family home projects on large areas of land because policies like the subdivision map act require more time and money from developers pursuing denser housing options. People simply cannot afford to buy homes because single-family zones maintain out-of-reach prices. The continuing racial wealth gap, combined with U.S. housing infrastructure and zoning rules, continue to exclude many people of color from homeownership.  

Single-family zoning contributes to gentrification and displacement 

Single-family zoning also plays a significant role in ongoing issues of gentrification and displacement. Because zoning law does not permit the creation of denser, more community-oriented housing in single-family zones that are predominantly white, newer development occurs in multi-use zones where more communities of color reside. These areas also tend to be those same areas that were historically redlined and the only places where low-income families and people of color could live as the result of exclusionary zoning.  

These communities face gentrification and displacement because they are often the only zones where new, denser development is permitted without influential neighborhood opposition.  Builders, their options limited by zoning restrictions, typically produce more high-end developments catering to affluent buyers or renters to meet investment returns desired by banks and investors. These developments become a gentrifying force when they bring in people with more wealth or higher incomes to the neighborhood, raising rents and housing prices in the community. Long-term community members often cannot keep up with the newer prices or face evictions by landlords who see an opportunity to collect higher rents from wealthier tenants. When communities of color are pushed out of their established neighborhoods and community spaces, it creates social and cultural devastation. While such an influx of development and inflation disrupts many communities of color in multi-family or mixed-use zones, historically predominantly white neighborhoods remain largely unaffected within the gates of single-family zoning, as explained by Jerusalem Demsas, a housing affordability specialist and staff writer at The Atlantic. Single-family zoning leads to displacement by preventing the increase of affordable housing.  

What could opening up mean? 

We understand why single-family zoning causes harm and perpetuates disinvestment for people outside these zones, but opening these single-family zones also has the potential for larger community benefits. Building at various densities within single-family zones would make it easier for people to gain homeownership and access to resources, such as quality education and healthcare, that have been situated in or close to these neighborhoods. Congruently, the Othering and Belonging Institute found “children who were raised in cities [with high rates of single-family zoning] 30 years ago have better outcomes in their adulthoods,” likely because “single-family zoning correlates with the hoarding of resources.” These resources and outcomes should be available to everyone, regardless of which zones they live in. Closer access to resources can produce positive environmental and health benefits with shortened daily commutes. 

When housing supply is limited and costs increase, housing options become scarce. Not only are people excluded from these neighborhoods, but the people within them are isolated. Opening single-family zones to accommodate different housing types and sizes can help create inclusive, more equitable environments, shorten commutes, increase access to basic needs, and make the basic human right to housing more accessible. This is why CCB advocates for a variety of housing density options, multi-family homeownership, and missing middle starter homes.