News Analysis
Challenges to single-family zoning are gathering steam nationwide, but an ambitious progressive agenda to promote high-density housing could suffer a major setback if Democrats lose control of Congress in the November midterm elections.
The stakes include billions of dollars in federal grants and hundreds of thousands of housing units, as President Joe Biden and Democratic lawmakers push for more federal action to encourage construction of affordable dwellings in suburbs and other communities.
For example, the Biden administration has doubled down on its calls for zoning reform,
saying in an Oct. 7 statement that it “continues to urge state and local governments to reduce needless barriers to housing production, especially restrictive zoning and land use regulations.”
The White House is also urging Congress to advance its housing agenda by passing investments in construction and preservation, as well as measures to end “exclusionary” zoning in states and localities. The vast majority of U.S. communities have such zoning policies, including minimum lot-size requirements to control density.
Biden’s
Housing Supply Action Plan, a bundle of administrative and legislative goals first announced in May, aims to tackle the U.S. housing shortage by financing the production of nearly 1 million affordable homes. Key to the plan is using federal funds to encourage local communities to make more land available for rental housing.
The administration has stated that it will use competitive grant programs under the Department of Transportation (DOT) to reward jurisdictions for having land-use policies that promote density and boost housing supply. The DOT has released three applications for such programs this year, totaling nearly $6 billion in funding.
Many Democratic lawmakers think this sweeping agenda doesn’t go far enough. In an
open letter published in August, members of the New Democrat Coalition, a caucus in the House, called on Biden “to take further actions to promote better zoning, planning, permitting, and affordable housing development,” primarily through the DOT and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
So far, a closely divided Senate has acted as a brake on these expansive policy plans. Biden’s proposal to invest more than $150 billion in housing, including $1.75 billion in grants designed to fight single-family zoning, ran aground when Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.)
pulled his support for the Build Back Better Act after it was passed by the House in November 2021.
Biden’s 2023 budget also called for $10 billion in HUD grants for states and localities that have dismantled barriers to affordable housing, but neither chamber of Congress took up the proposal. A
draft fiscal year 2023 funding bill released by the House Appropriations Committee in June provides a total of $62.7 billion for HUD, but none of that money is explicitly linked to zoning reform.
Executive Action
Republican victories in Congress this month could further derail legislative efforts to remake local zoning policies. While control of the Senate is a toss-up, Republicans are strongly favored to retake the House, according to many election experts.
Regardless of the outcome of the midterms, the campaign to impose high-density housing on American neighborhoods will likely continue by other means. Last year, for example, Biden
quietly revived the Fair Housing Act’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) provision, an Obama-era housing regulation that critics charge would effectively federalize suburban zoning policies.
The 2015 regulation, which former President Donald Trump killed off in 2020, requires state and local governments that receive HUD funds to prove they’re addressing “significant disparities in housing needs and in access to opportunity” and replacing “segregated living patterns with racially balanced living patterns,” among other far-reaching requirements.
In effect, the rule transfers zoning authority from 1,200 jurisdictions that accept HUD money to the federal government.
According to Stanley Kurtz, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, AFFH also leaves communities vulnerable to being sued by the administration or activist nonprofits for not meeting the policy’s nebulous definition of “fair housing.”
Local Moves
Efforts to scrap single-family zoning are moving forward at the state and local levels, spurred by housing activists who argue that lifting restrictions on higher-density housing is a crucial step in addressing the nation’s shortage of shelter.
California effectively
abolished single-family zoning last year by allowing up to four dwellings to be built on almost any parcel, regardless of local zoning rules. Oregon passed a similar law in 2019. Cities such as Minneapolis and Tacoma, Washington, have also liberalized their zoning regulations. Gainesville, Florida, is poised to vote next week on a controversial plan to allow multifamily units in single-family neighborhoods.
Soaring home prices and rents in recent years have fueled concerns that there’s too little housing for sale or rent in large parts of the United States. Moody’s Analytics estimates that the country is facing a
shortfall of 1.5 million homes, driving a low vacancy rate of 4.5 percent.
A rapidly cooling housing market, however, is boosting the inventory of homes for sale, which should alleviate this shortage.
