According to Curbed, the debate over building more or less single-family homes was partially defined by the failure in California to approve zoning changes that would have encouraged more density. The debate over solving housing shortages breaks down into skirmished between Nimbys, Yimbys and Phimby's which equates to, "public housing in my backyard."
Most of this debate revolves around not the houses themselves, but zoning and land use. That makes sense. The houses cannot be extricated from the land upon which they sit and the policies that govern its use. And perhaps it’s no surprise that the vitriol toward single-family housing tends to center in urban areas where housing is scarce, and where other housing types are visible. But the debate also raises larger questions about single-family homes: What is their value in this current political moment? And is it immoral for us to keep building them?
The term “single-family home” comes from planning, and it denotes either a land-use policy (such as single-family residential zoning) or a specific housing typology consisting of homes built for the occupancy of one family or household. It’s a category that encompasses an enormous variety of home types: The Coonley House by Frank Lloyd Wright is as much a single-family home as an abandoned rowhouse in the city of Baltimore. A California Craftsman bungalow in housing-scarce San Francisco is just as much a single-family house as a four-square built across the street from Love Canal.
Even if we look solely at large houses for the wealthy, we find vastly different attitudes from the public and the architectural establishment alike toward the architecturally rich neighborhood of Oak Park, Illinois, than we do toward the McMansion Hell of a gated community in New Jersey.
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