Posted Feb 22, 2021, 7:58 PM
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To Create More Affordable Housing, Make Zoning Hyperlocal
To Create More Affordable Housing, Make Zoning Hyperlocal
February 19, 2021
By John Myers and Michael Hendrix
Read More: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...g?srnd=citylab
Quote:
When Sacramento proposed changing its zoning rules to allow four homes on land that had permitted just one, something remarkable happened: The reform passed city council, unanimously, with little of the outrage over new housing that’s long haunted California politics. The public comments were overwhelmingly supportive. Politicians lined up to praise the measure, which passed this January, even San Francisco Mayor London Breed, who presides over a city where such “fourplexes” are mostly illegal. Sacramento now joins other U.S. cities, including Portland and Minneapolis, that have legalized the construction of more homes in more places.
- Even in cities that have passed modest reforms, the politics of local planning often stand in the way of more ambitious change. We know what helps fight high housing prices: loosening minimum lot size requirements that don’t allow homes to be built on small tracts, for instance, or allowing backyard apartments and “missing middle” housing like duplexes and triplexes. — The problem is not identifying reforms to allow more homes; it’s getting them passed at the city or state level. Without such reform, in local planning meetings across the U.S. where decisions about new developments get made, the voices of opponents are frequently the loudest and most influential. What passes for community participation in America is too often limited to a privileged few with the time and resources to attain an outsize influence on the workings of government.
- What if there’s a way to overcome the political obstacles in the way of development with support from local stakeholders? Not a substitute to state and local housing laws, but a complement: what we call hyperlocal zoning reform. Local governments would give streets and blocks the right to decide for themselves if they want to allow denser housing. Neighbors could pick from a menu of modest reforms, from reducing minimum lot sizes and green-lighting “granny flats” to allowing missing middle housing and apartments. — A single street or block could simply hold a vote and reach a goal the city sets, say, a 60% “yes” from residents. One key feature is that hyperlocal zoning would be a supplement to existing zoning codes, meaning it could simply be implemented by a planning department, and wouldn’t stop cities from passing other broader reforms.
- Experts from the late economist Robert Nelson to Yale Law School’s Robert Ellickson have suggested devolving zoning down to the neighborhood or even block level, much like how we implement parking meters, or as we see in business improvement districts and homeowners’ associations already. — Of course, upzoning a single street will not solve America’s housing crisis. But upzoning many streets could help to end it. The idea should catch on as people see other residents radically improve their lives. The virtue of hyperlocal zoning reform is that it would make policies more incremental and less visible and, because the residents themselves decide, more likely to favor winning proposals that will actually improve a neighborhood. — What’s more, the targeted nature of street or block votes would make it easier for planners to respond to local demands, whether for more parking or better design standards, while giving owners more flexible property rights that could expand housing availability.
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