Not In My Neighborhood

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To critics, this amounts to little more than a thinly veiled effort by affluent and largely white neighborhoods to exclude strangers while boosting the value of their homes. Observes San Diego's Sanford Goodkin: "A stranger is defined as anyone who bought a house the day after I did." He and others claim that the effect of growth controls will be most severe on the poor, cutting jobs and investment in their neighborhoods. But developers have never been eager to build in poorer areas, and many of those neighborhoods are equally concerned about congestion. In Los Angeles, Proposition U passed by large margins in all 15 council districts, including Watts and other low- income communities.

For now, developers are on the defensive, turning to the courts for relief and hoping that rising unemployment and real estate prices will eventually bring voters to their way of thinking. They could be in for a long wait. Says Kenneth Bley, a real estate lawyer in Los Angeles: "There are simply more voters than developers." Only now are enough of those angry voters making their numbers felt.