The well-heeled Silicon Valley suburb of Woodside has come up with a novel way to block plans that would potentially bring in more affordable housing: Declare itself Cougar Town.
Last week, officials in the enclave of 5,500 people announced that all of Woodside was exempt from a new state housing law that allows for duplex development on single-family home lots. The reason? The entire town is habitat for potentially endangered mountain lions.
— The LA Times
The move is potentially foreshadowing of the ways in which local governments in California will, as predicted before Governor Gavin Newsome signed S.B. 9 into law in September, attempt to brush off the state’s efforts to mandate zoning that would engender an increase in multi-family residential units and affordable housing.
Critics say the pushback stems from the age-old notion of California living as an ever-expanding idyll of freeway-connected suburbs filled with single-family homes that has become outdated and regressive under the modern economy, pushing many to leave the state for greener pastures. The mountain lion population in Woodside constitutes in their eyes an egregious attempt to use wildlife as a shield in the town leadership’s preservation schemes.
“Don’t believe for a second that this is driven by mountain lion habitat concerns,” former town council member Daniel Yost told the LA Times. “It is not. It is resistance by some members of the Town Council to do our fair share in meeting housing requirements.”
4 Comments
I heard they were originally going to call their town Plenty of Fish, but that was rejected.
If those cougs are so important to them, they should bulldoze their houses and return the site to nature. I'd love to litigate this.
Feed the affluent to the cougars, problem solved.
I hear that cougars are all about housing.
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