Neighborhoods zoned exclusively for single-family homes have borne ample blame for Los Angeles’ affordable housing shortage.

Suburbs, too, were held responsible for the recent failure of a hot-button state housing bill seeking to encourage new housing development across California by rolling back restrictions on single-family zoning near public transit and job hubs — known as SB 50.

Some of the loudest of the homeowner associations and neighborhood councils fighting SB 50 tooth and nail were in the San Fernando Valley, out of fear it would drastically alter the character of their communities.

How did these unyielding and politically communities of single family neighborhoods come to be?

The story begins in a post-war suburban development boom and ends now, when exclusively single-family home neighborhoods no longer define the Valley yet many of their inhabitants aren’t ready to let go.

Early 20th century to post-WWII: Rise of America’s suburb

A little over 100 years ago, the San Fernando Valley had no streetlights, electricity or running water. Large ranches and scattered hamlets run by regional barons like Isaac Newton Van Nuys and Isaac Lankershim dominated the region, according to a 200-page account of the Valley’s history by Kevin Roderick.

As big-city capitalists like Los Angeles Times soon-to-be-publisher Harry Chandler and the Los Angeles Suburban Homes Co. made major land purchases in the Valley, new towns of Tarzana, Van Nuys, Marian and Owensmouth popped up with $350 homes for sale.

The big business of subdivision rose in the 1920s with William Mulholland’s successful completion of an aqueduct to deliver valuable water supply to the Los Angeles Basin, which the city would later hold hostage in exchange for the valley’s annexation.

But the Valley suburban boom didn’t really begin until during World War II and the years after, when the entertainment and aerospace industries introduced new jobs. Encouraging a culture of home ownership, the brand new Federal Housing Administration helped returning veterans finance homes by guaranteeing loans with longer repayment periods, offsetting a then-shortage of affordable housing.

In the first five post-war years, the population of the San Fernando Valley more than doubled to 402,538 residents with standardized two-bedroom tract cottages with a garage costing some $3,609. Tract homes with barbecues, swimming pools, large yards and roomy driveways were aggressively marketed to a growing middle class.

But the Valley’s Southern California dream wasn’t open to all. Redlining was widespread, of which the FHA was part and parcel by outright denying mortgage insurance to black Angelenos. In the northeast Valley, for example, Panorama City was a whites-only planned community made up of houses purchased under the G.I. Bill.

A typical deed for a postwar subdivision in Sherman Oaks or Van Nuys read that the property could never be leased, sold used or occupied by any person “other than those whose blood is entirely that of the caucasian race … no Japanese, Chinese, Mexican, Hindu or any person of the Ethiopian, Indian, Mongolian race,” Roderick’s book quotes.

Some scholars like Richard Rothstein argue that de facto segregation continued in the form of zoning policies even after racially restrictive housing was outlawed by the 1948 Supreme Court Case Shelley v. Kraemer, out of an effort to make it more difficult for lower-income families to live in expensive white neighborhoods.

1960s to today: Valley zoning and suburban no more

Today, almost half of Los Angeles land is zoned exclusively for single-family homes. That number hovers around 42% in just the San Fernando Valley, according neighborhood council community plans.

Compared to New York City, where just 15% of all land is zoned single-family, it’s a hefty percentage and a core part of LA’s culture.

Yet it wasn’t always that way. Less than 5 percent of the city’s zoned land was exclusively restricted to single-family homes in 1933, as Andrew H. Whittemore wrote in his study “Zoning Los Angeles: A brief history of four regimes.”

The bump in single-family zoning began in the 1960s, when well-organized homeowners in the Valley and Westside communities beg pushing for height limits and restricted development in their neighborhoods — while expanding the regimen of exclusive residential zones.

Through the election of anti-growth and development candidates to the City Council, argues Whittemore, suburban homeowners of the Valley and the Westside imposed a system of no growth or slow growth on the entire city through the 1990s to preserve a suburban way of life.

Homeowner dominance of land-use policy in the 1970’s was coupled with a substantial shift in the region’s population. By the 2010 census, 39.6% of the Valley’s whopping 1.8 million residents were foreign born a plurality were Latino.

Developers began building some of the Valley’s multi-family housing in the 60s, mostly two- to three story apartments around main thoroughfares and commercial areas. According to Roderick, it was a politically sensitive issue even then.

Of course, multi-family housing is no longer stranger to the Valley. Its character leans more urban than suburban in some neighborhoods, particularly North Hollywood, Van Nuys and Woodland Hills’ Warner Center.

South Valley hills are home to the highest proportion of neighborhoods exclusively zoned for single family use, but communities like Sylmar, Reseda and Van Nuys trail close behind.

Today’s affordable housing shortage: Is exclusive single-family zoning to blame?

According to a recent report from the California Housing Partnership and the Southern California Association of Nonprofit Housing, 516,946 new units are needed to satisfy the demand of lower-income renters in LA County.

Renters in Los Angeles are also the third most cost-burdened in the country, shows a report on housing costs by Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation. A renter would need an income of at least $9,600 a year more than they are making now to afford the median rent of $1,340 a month.

Given these towering gaps, proponents of legislation like the now-shelved SB 50 argue that single-family zoning needs to be re-evaluated.

The California Association of Realtors co-authored SB 50 and Tim Johnson, CEO of the San Fernando Valley’s equivalent, is in full support.

“In the Valley, supply of housing is terribly low, which causes the affordability problems,” he said. “The reality is we should be talking about anything and everything in terms of housing stock.”

Yet opponents from Sherman Oaks to Marin and Santa Barbara County decried the infringement on zoning laws as an attack on local control and quality of life — renters advocates also argue that supply-side economics translate more often to displacement, not affordable housing.

At a Sherman Oaks homeowners association meeting this week, state Senator Bob Hertzberg — who took the lead on opposition to SB 50 in committee — talked up new plans to work with local leadership in building some 5,000 new units of housing using state lands or tax breaks in so-called “opportunity zones.”

“The fake news is that the San Fernando Valley is just a place of single-family homes, that’s just NIMBYs,” he said. “The truth is the Valley is a place of opportunity and dreams, and smart people who want to solve problems in a way that works for everyone.”

Kevin Roderick, author of the Valley history, suggested that although the majority of Angelenos don’t live in single-family housing, they support the idea of it being there.

“I think single family housing has just been a scapegoat in this conversation for people who have kind of a more ideological resistance to single-family housing,” he said.

“In a city the size of Los Angeles there’s more than enough room for single-family neighborhoods and concentrated transit-oriented development, and it’s not that hard to protect single-family neighborhoods while you’re doing it.”