Regional government has been a bugbear here for too long. A new metropolitan government could spearhead housing efforts. Our homes need to catch up. By letting folks rent out ADUs, we could create scores of thousands of affordable units overnight. A new Metro ought to create a tool chest and set of minimum standards for doing that all across the region.
Regional government can empower neighborhoods.
We shouldn't let developers scatter big apartment buildings and chain stores around our single-family neighborhoods. A Metro can not only hand out the tools to make this possible, it can also fund the amenities parks and playfields, public art and street trees, sidewalks and swimming pools to make it work. The Inner Ring is becoming our new ghetto, where working families and the poor find themselves pushed out from the gentrifying central cities and shut out from the wealthy outer suburbs, living with run-down roads, old strip malls and suburban houses, and few public services. We need a Marshall Plan for the Inner Ring. Just as after World War II we rebuilt the economies of Europe, we need now to restore the communities of the Inner Ring.