Build outward, not upward, to solve Californias housing shortage

“Build outwards, not upwards.” That line, from gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton, might be the best summary of what California needs to do to solve the housing crisis.As The California Post has reported, realtor.com estimates that there is a national housing gap of 4 million units.California’s political class has decided that the way to address that shortage is to build ugly urban high-rises.The biggest news, opinion and culture shaping California right now.

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Never miss a story That’s the thrust of SB 79, the brainchild of state Sen.Scott Wiener, which overrides local governments and zoning regulations and allows the building of high-rise apartment buildings near transit hubs.

 But progress has been slow, and that’s partly because high-rise apartments are not anyone’s idea of what a long-term investment in housing should be.Californians, like other Americans, want single-family homes — homes with space, yards, driveways, privacy and the kind of pride of ownership that comes with a picket fence.That’s not what left-wing policymakers want us to have. Ever since the 1960s, when Malvina Reynolds and Pete Seeger sang against “Little boxes made of ticky-tacky” that “all look just the same,” elite opinion has looked down on single-family homes.We are told that they are conformist, bad for the environment or even that they are symbols of white supremacy. But they remain central to the American dream, for people of all backgrounds. Instead of finding ways to make high-rises attractive, California policymakers need to find ways to encourage the development of single-family homes.That means developing more capacity for water storage and energy production.

It means building more roads and more public transportation routes — routes people will actually use, not high-speed-rail boondoggles.We c...