US Cities Try Changing Their Zoning Rules to Allow More Housing

Tech workers are accused of driving up rents in America's major cities — but in fact, the problem may be everywhere. Half of America's renters 'are paying more than a third of their salary in housing costs,' reports NPR's Weekend Edition, 'and for those looking to buy, scant few homes on the market are affordable for a typical household.

'To ramp up supply, cities are taking a fresh look at their zoning rules and the regulations that spell out what can be built where and what can't.'

And many are finding that their old rules are too rigid, making it too hard and too expensive to build many new homes. So these cities, as well as some states, are undertaking a process called zoning reform. They're crafting new rules that do things like allow multifamily homes in more neighborhoods, encourage more density near transit and streamline permitting processes for those trying to build... Minneapolis was ahead of the pack as it made a series of changes to its zoning rules in recent years: allowing more density downtown and along transit corridors, getting rid of parking requirements, permitting construction of accessory dwelling units, which are secondary dwellings on the same lot. And one change in particular made national news: The city ended single-family zoning, allowing two- and three-unit homes to be built in every neighborhood.

Researchers at The Pew Charitable Trusts examined the effects of the changes between 2017 and 2022, as many of the city's most significant zoning reforms came into effect. They found what they call a 'blueprint for housing affordability.' 'We saw Minneapolis add 12% to its housing stock in just that five-year period, far more than other cities,' Alex Horowitz, director of housing policy initiatives at Pew, told NPR... 'The zoning reforms made apartments feasible. They made them less expensive to build. And they were saying yes when builders submitted applications to build apartment buildings. So they got a lot of new housing in a short period of time,' says Horowitz. That supply increase appears to have helped keep rents down too. Rents in Minneapolis rose just 1% during this time, while they increased 14% in the rest of Minnesota.

Horowitz says cities such as Minneapolis, Houston and Tysons, Va., have built a lot of housing in the last few years and, accordingly, have seen rents stabilize while wages continue to rise, in contrast with much of the country... Now, these sorts of changes are happening in cities and towns around the country. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley built a zoning reform tracker and identified zoning reform efforts in more than 100 municipal jurisdictions in the U.S. in recent years.

Other cities reforming their codes include Milwaukee, Columbus, New York City, Walla Walla, and South Bend, Indiana, according to the article — which also includes this quote from Nolan Gray, the urban planner who wrote the book Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It.

'Most American cities and most American states have rules on the books that make it really, really hard to build more infill housing. So if you want a California-style housing crisis, don't do anything. But if you want to avoid the fate of states like California, learn some of the lessons of what we've been doing over the last few years and allow for more of that infill, mixed-income housing.'

Although interestingly, the article points out that California in recent years has been pushing zoning reform at the state level, 'passing lots of legislation to address the state's housing crisis, including a law that requires cities and counties to permit accessory dwelling units. Now, construction of ADUs is booming, with more than 28,000 of the units permitted in California in 2022.'

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