Stanford University Single-Family Zoning and Spatial Inequality
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Stanford University Single-Family Zoning and Spatial Inequality Prepared for Silicon Valley @ Home Matthew Jumamoy, A.J. Nadel, Jordy Portillo, and Olivia Shields URBANST 141 Professor Michael Kahan June 11, 2020 Jumamoy, Nadel, Portillo, and Shields 2 1. Introduction As a plane prepares its final approach to San Jose’s Norman Y. Mineta International Airport, peeking out of the clouds, passengers get a breathtaking look at the City of San Jose from high above. It’s early on a Monday evening, and looking towards the city below, the skyscrapers of the central business district are eclipsed by a sea of streets embellished by green trees. From this dense core, large freeways radiate from this center, carrying countless cars in all directions, from those moving swiftly on State Route 87 to the endless line of red lights crawling on Interstate 280. Extending far beyond the urban core, miles of neatly aligned homes radiate in all directions until they start to climb both sides of the Santa Clara Valley, from the far east of Alum Rock to the far west of Cupertino. In this grandeur overview of the city, the suburbs seem to be unified in their dominance of the landscape, reflecting their origin as an all-American commoditized product (Rose, 1984). However, instead of the manifestation of the capitalist vision of the democratization of homeownership, these communities face divides and inequality, reflecting scars of institutionalized racism and bias that have pervaded their landscape since their inception. These scars, more formally identified as spatial inequality, pervade all American cities, tracing their roots collectively to deeply segregated neighborhoods with racist housing policies, discriminatory lending by the federal government in the wake of the Great Depression, exclusionary housing contracts, and countless other actions pitting socioeconomically disadvantaged people and people of color against privileged, often white communities of political clout and economic strength. As sharply defined as these initial forms of spatial inequality were with streets, physical features, or paper contracts serving as the clear definitions Jumamoy, Nadel, Portillo, and Shields 3 of division, other drivers of spatial inequality are being identified. More recently, the zoning designation of single-family housing has come under scrutiny as being a driving force in spatial inequality. By applying this zoning designation in an area of limited space, such as that of the Santa Clara Valley, the processes of gentrification and displacement gradually occur with limited creation of accessible and affordable housing units. From these market forces reacting to single-family zoning, spatial inequality grows worse with people of color being pushed out further from urban cores into suburbs and exurbs. In this paper, we have three primary focuses. First, through a literature review, we will analyze recent academic developments in which scholars hold single-family zoning responsible, in coordination with redlining and restrictive covenants, for perpetuating demographic patterns behind spatial inequality. Then, we will explore contemporary attitudes toward and responses to single-family zoning from the perspectives of city governments and grassroots advocacy groups. Finally, we will analyze statistics regarding persistent inequality arising from single-family zoning to explore the extent to which racial and socioeconomic divides have changed over the course of San Jose’s history. 2. Literature Review When trying to identify spatial inequality, it is most intuitive to look at a racial dot map. When viewing San Jose, the persistence of racialized divides within the city is evident. Although there are areas that are becoming more diverse with a mix of various races, it is quite clear that there is still a divide between Latinx communities and white communities in San Jose. East San Jose and South San Jose, areas with large proportions of low socioeconomic status residents, have a large majority of the city’s Latinx residents, while western suburbs lining the Santa Cruz Jumamoy, Nadel, Portillo, and Shields 4 Mountains and Silicon Valley suburbs are primarily white and of higher socioeconomic class (Cable, 2013). This distinction, which divides the city socioeconomically and racially along California State Route 87 and Almaden Expressway, paints the modern picture of spatial inequality and segregation. To help explore the depth of these divides, it is useful to examine the local origin of the name of that dividing expressway: Almaden. When mercury deposits were found in what is now East San Jose in 1845, Spanish land grant owner Andres Castillero decided to name the new mercury mine New Almaden, in honor of Almaden, a famous Spanish mercury mine (Gudde and Bright, 2010). The New Almaden Mine, the origin of all uses of “Almaden” in Santa Clara Valley, was from the start, an operation that relied on “racial hierarchies” (Johnston, 2013). “Mexican and Chilean workers” were tasked with exploring mercury deposits with uncoordinated, dangerous mining techniques, while “Cornish and European miners” were tasked with exploring “‘advanced’ mining methods” that used “theory” rather than “empirical” methods of finding mercury (Johnston, 2013). This disparity of working conditions between white and Spanish-speaking workers highlights one story within a fabric of racism and inequality that permeates into today’s physical spatial inequality manifested across the City of San Jose. In the following literature review, we will explore scholars’ diverging perspectives on how spatial inequality has presented itself from the time of the New Almaden Mine to contemporary San Jose, and all across the United States. We will first explore how authors suggest that modern spatial inequality owes its roots to racial covenants and redlining implemented in the 1920s and 1930s. Then, we will analyze arguments pointing out that in addition to racial covenants and redlining, zoning and specifically, single-family zoning, plays an equally, if not greater, role in creating the modern expression of Jumamoy, Nadel, Portillo, and Shields 5 spatial inequality. Finally, we will examine the extent to which these two viewpoints intersect upon the common ground of persistent systemic racism being a driving force of spatial inequality. 2.2 Redlining and Racial Covenants Historian Richard Rothstein, author of The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America and David Freund, author of Colored Property: State Policy and White Racial Politics in Suburban America elucidate the conception and implementation of racially restrictive practices, specifically restrictive covenants and redlining that intentionally segregated neighborhoods on the basis of race and class. Freund likens racially restrictive covenants to racially restrictive zoning, grounding both practices in the idea that black occupants of lands and homes threatened the value of private property as well as the health and welfare of white property owners. Rather than admit to prejudice, white officials rationalized restrictive covenants and zoning as sound land-use practices. Restrictive covenants, as Freund defines, are legal instruments written into property deeds or established through an additional agreement that dictates how a parcel of land can be used by current and future owners (Freund, 2007). Covenants were binding, often demanding membership in “homeowners’ associations” so that residents could sue those who violated covenant terms. By the 1910s, restrictive covenants were common in middle-class residential areas, defining rules regarding new construction, changing current structures, and controlling the types of buildings that could be erected on the land. Concurrently, race-specific restrictive covenants became increasingly popular, even before economists and realtors factored in racial integration as a risk to land value. Racially restrictive covenants frequently listed specific racial groups that could not buy or rent the designated land Jumamoy, Nadel, Portillo, and Shields 6 parcel or stated that only Caucasian or white people could occupy the land. After the 1917 Buchanan v. Warley ruling struck down racial zoning, a type of zoning that involved specifically citing race as grounds for zoning regulations, racially restrictive covenants became even more attractive to whites seeking to maintain racial homogeneity in their neighborhoods. In fact, racially restrictive covenants provided a tool of racial exclusion that lasted until the 1948 Supreme Court case Shelley v. Kraemer deemed them to be “non-enforceable” (Freund, 2007). By this time, estimates showed that approximately 85% of the nation’s newest large residential developments were racially restricted; for example, all of Detroit’s new subdivisions included racially restrictive covenants that banned anyone considered to be a “Negro,” or an individual with “1/8 or more Negro blood” (Freund, 2007). Like exclusionary zoning practices, racially restrictive covenant use tied racial integration with the reduction of value, health and safety of a neighborhood. Moreover, the federal practice of redlining, expounded by Rothstein and Freund, further illustrates the role of government in designing a housing market that favored white homeownership, encouraging white families to exclusively occupy single-family homes. In the wake of the Great Depression, the federal government urgently promoted homeownership through creating several organizations,