Dec. 4, 2025 5 AM PT
To the editor: The reply to our housing issues doesn’t lie in creating extra locations to construct, not to mention destroying areas that make California the enduring place it’s to dwell (at current) (“More housing on the California coast? Changes at this agency signal a pro-building shift,” Nov. 14). There have been articles and feedback on an virtually each day foundation, together with elsewhere within the Dec. 2 version of the Los Angeles Occasions, calling for options aside from constructing/rebuilding in areas liable to catastrophe.
An extended-term answer ought to embrace the next:
As an alternative of continuous to broaden into new areas and constructing in fire-prone areas or locations topic to violent storms and flooding, how about we promote fewer folks in these areas? I.e., both by requiring denser constructing in already developed areas or, ideally (to me, anyway), selling slower development charges or perhaps a decreased inhabitants.
Local weather change additionally presents a risk for denser/decreased inhabitants sooner or later, one thing more and more extra seemingly as we delay laws pertaining to using fossil fuels. Components of the planet might turn out to be uninhabitable, forcing us to maneuver into these zones nonetheless livable.
As our world’s financial system appears to be primarily based on an ever-increasing inhabitants, if it had been to lower, it could require a rethinking/restrategizing of our economics. However as it could be fairly some time earlier than any lower in inhabitants could be evident, this offers us time to reformulate our financial methods.
John Snyder, Newbury Park
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To the editor: The Coastal Fee ought to keep in its lane and do its job of defending our treasured coast for generations to get pleasure from. Making an attempt to resolve the housing affordability disaster by exploiting our coastlines is shameful — notably when these doing it have a lot to achieve. Foxes guarding the henhouse.
Emily Loughran, Los Angeles
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To the editor: This text has a bit in regards to the Coastal Fee’s origins, though a big a part of its housing historical past was lacking.
When the California Coastal Act established a everlasting Coastal Fee in 1976, it required that housing for individuals of low and reasonable revenue be protected and, the place possible, supplied. That was the legislation after I served on the fee from 1977 to 1985.. Sadly, in 1981, the Legislature repealed the Coastal Act’s express reasonably priced housing necessities. Solely not too long ago have policymakers and commissioners reembraced extra absolutely the notion that California’s coast ought to be accessible to all.
Mel Nutter, Lengthy Seashore
This author was chair of the California Coastal Fee from 1983-1985.
