Op-Ed: An affordable housing fix: Make room for granny

Editorial Board, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
We’ve said it before. Building more houses is a surefire solution to the affordable housing crisis.
Of course, that’s easier said than done. We’ve said that, too.There are practical obstacles — unsuitable land, inadequate water supplies, endangered species protections, steep fees for the new parks, new schools and other infrastructure needed to serve new homes. Oftentimes there are political obstacles, too, everything from neighborhood opposition to a specific development proposal to reflexive objections to growth of any kind.
Is it any wonder that communities across the state are struggling to meet the need for affordable, habitable housing?
There isn’t a solution that will satisfy everyone.It’s going to take a variety of strategies to chip away at this problem, and state legislators are reviewing proposals to facilitate an approach that could produce a significant amount of new housing without sprawl: adding granny units to single-family homes.
Supervisorial candidates in Sonoma County have floated the same idea.
Consider this: Construction began on about 1,500 new housing units in Sonoma County in 2015. And that was the largest number in several years. Adding a second unit to 10 percent of the existing homes in Sonoma County would create about 12,000 new housing units. A similar increase across the nine-county Bay Area would translate to about 150,000 new housing units.
An improbable scenario? Yes, it is. But it illustrates the scale of the potential gains to be made by scattering new housing throughout existing neighborhoods.
Read more at: PD Editorial: A housing fix: Make room for granny | The Press Democrat