Updating the Fair Housing Act to Make Housing More Affordable

On April 11, 1968, Lyndon B. Johnson signed the federal Fair Housing Act, which outlawed racial discrimination in the sale and rental of housing units. As we celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of that great landmark in America’s march for freedom and racial justice, policymakers and researchers have been thinking anew about ways to further the act’s goals of reducing racial discrimination and residential segregation. In a recent Century Foundation report, I called for the enactment of an Economic Fair Housing Act to curtail the widespread use of exclusionary zoning—ordinances that designate entire communities solely for those who can afford detached single-family homes, often with minimum lot sizes. Forbidding builders from developing apartment buildings or townhouses in certain regions increases both economic and racial segregation. This segregation is harmful because, as decades of research has found, where people live affects their access to employment opportunities, good schools, transportation, and decent health care.¹

But exclusionary zoning is problematic for a second reason, one which I touched on only lightly in the first report: it makes housing less affordable by artificially driving up the price of housing units. Limiting the number of units of housing a builder can erect on a given plot of land limits, by government fiat, the supply of housing, making each unit, under the basic law of supply and demand, less affordable. Government-sponsored increases in housing prices are a deeply troubling phenomenon in a nation that is suffering what the Urban Institute has called “the worst affordable housing crisis in decades.”²

While opposing segregation will always be a central moral rationale for opposing exclusionary zoning, today, at least as politically resonant is the recognition that exclusionary ordinances make housing more expensive. Indeed, in states such as California, Washington, and Massachusetts, where housing prices are high, opponents of exclusionary or “snob” zoning are prioritizing the affordability argument in public debates. Take, for example, California’s Senate Bill 827 to curtail exclusionary zoning. A headline in literature from leading activists suggests: “The Rent is Too Damn High and Homes are too Expensive. SB 827 will end the shortage and create millions of homes.”³

This report proceeds in two parts. In the first part, I outline the extent of America’s affordability crisis and the ways in which exclusionary zoning policies have contributed to it. In the second part, I discuss important efforts in three states to reduce exclusionary zoning by emphasizing affordability issues. While some observers suggest that exclusionary zoning is an immutable fact of life, unchangeable given the political power of incumbent property owners, new evidence suggests their grip on the political process may be less firm than it once was.

Exclusionary Zoning and America’s Housing Affordability Crisis

The Housing Squeeze

For eighty years, since passage of the United States National Housing Act of 1937, public policy has suggested that families should spend no more than 30 percent of their pre-tax income on housing.⁴ Yet, according to a 2017 report of Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, 33 percent of American renters and homeowners pay more than that. Renters are particularly stretched. Nearly half of all renters (21 million Americans) spend more than 30 percent on housing. In fact, about a quarter of renters in the United States (about 11 million families) spend more than half of their incomes on housing needs.⁵ (See Figure 1.) Overall, home prices have been rising twice as fast as wages.⁶ U.S. home ownership in late 2017 was near a fifty-year low at just 63.9 percent. ⁷

Figure 1

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The fundamental problem, says Patrick Newport, executive director for U.S. economics at HIS Markit, is that there is “a lot of scarcity in most places—builders just aren’t putting up enough homes.”⁸

Exclusionary Zoning Contributes to Unaffordability

When considering how to respond to affordability issues, many Americans naturally think about increasing government support to subsidize public housing. That impulse is basically right: government-supported public housing will always be critically needed. But it is also important to dismantle hidden government policies, such as exclusionary zoning, which are themselves a major source of the affordability crisis in the first instance.

Researchers have found that exclusionary zoning, by limiting housing density, artificially drives up the price of available housing units. Dense housing is more affordable than single-family homes for at least four reasons:

• Because density provides more units per acre, land costs are cheaper for the developer;
• Dense units (such as apartments) have fewer exterior walls, which keeps construction costs lower;
• Compact developments reduce infrastructure costs for trunk lines and treatment facilities; and
• Dense housing increases overall supply relative to demand, resulting in lower prices for consumers.

In sum, as writer Brent Toderian notes, “Not all dense housing is affordable, but all affordable housing is dense.”⁹ 

Progressive and conservative economists generally agree that the government constraint on housing supply that exclusionary zoning imposes distorts markets and artificially raises rents and home prices. Right-leaning economist Edward Glaeser argues in the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal that eliminating exclusionary zoning would make housing cheaper, citing the relatively lower prices in Houston, which is among the least-regulated housing markets when compared with other cities.¹⁰ He and his colleague Bryce Ward have found that “each extra acre of minimum lot size decreases new construction by roughly 40 percent and increases housing prices by roughly 10 percent.”¹¹ Likewise, conservative economist Joseph Gyourko of the Wharton School estimates that excessive zoning has pushed real house prices a staggering 56 percent above real construction costs.¹²  (See Figure 2.)

Figure 2

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Meanwhile, on the center-left, Jason Furman, the chair of the Council of Economic Advisors in the Obama administration, favorably cited Gyourko’s research in arguing against excessive zoning.¹³ And no less a liberal than Lyndon Johnson created a commission in 1968 to address the ways in which zoning was artificially inflating housing prices, reducing affordability for low- and moderate-income families.¹⁴ 

To the extent that exclusionary zoning artificially props up property values by creating scarcity, curtailing such policies will have the healthy effect of bringing prices into line with market realities, and thereby reducing the housing affordability crisis. Eliminating exclusionary zoning would not bring property values below market value: it would bring them to the market level. Millions of Americans who are now shut out of the housing market by artificially high prices would benefit.

Eliminating exclusionary zoning would not bring property values below market value: it would bring them to the market level. Millions of Americans who are now shut out of the housing market by artificially high prices would benefit.

Progressive critics will note (correctly) that ending exclusionary zoning will not by itself end economic housing segregation or the affordability crisis for many American families. If, for example, an area zoned for single-family homes becomes open to multiple family units, a developer might build luxury townhomes or condominiums, as opposed to affordable apartments. More generally, new dense housing might be higher-quality and more expensive than existing less-dense housing stock. In Silicon Valley, for example, developers in gentrifying areas have recently been introducing dense, but more expensive, new housing.¹⁵ 

Because density by itself does not guarantee affordability, government support of affordable housing is also necessary. But curtailing exclusionary zoning will have a salutary impact in and of itself because government policy, as much as the marketplace, drives the affordability crisis.

State Efforts to Reduce Exclusionary Zoning by Emphasizing Affordability

At the federal level, fair housing and affordability efforts are taking steps backwards. In January, the Trump administration suspended until October 2020 the Obama administration’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule, which requires localities to adopt concrete strategies to overcome segregation.¹⁶ 

In March, the administration proposed dropping from its mission statement reference to a commitment to “build inclusive and sustainable communities free from discrimination” and replace it with “opportunities to achieve self-sufficiency.”¹⁷ 

But the good news is that at the state and local level, activists and legislators are redoubling their efforts to promote diversity and inclusion in jurisdictions such as California, Massachusetts, and Seattle, Washington. In California, Governor Jerry Brown signed fifteen pieces of legislation in 2017 designed to speed construction and drive down housing prices.¹⁸ Currently, the legislature is considering SB 827 to override local zoning restrictions in order to allow four-to-eight-story buildings near mass transportation stops.¹⁹ 

In Massachusetts, Republican governor Charlie Baker has proposed incentives for cities to relax exclusionary zoning rules, and the legislature is debating an effort to outlaw exclusionary zoning altogether. Meanwhile, in Seattle, in recent years, Mayor Edward Murray backed an aggressive Housing Affordability and Living Agenda that would challenge the prevalence of exclusionary zoning in the city. The effort suffered a setback after the mayor was embroiled in a personal scandal and resigned from office, but activists are hoping to keep the discussions alive.

Affordability issues have been central in each of these campaigns, which represents an important shift. Historically, efforts to curtail exclusionary zoning have emphasized that such policies foster racial and economic segregation. In litigation in New Jersey, for example, the NAACP was the lead plaintiff in challenging the town of Mount Laurel to open up its borders to low-income and minority residents who were shut out by zoning policies. In all three new campaigns against exclusionary zoning, the moral arguments about civil rights, segregation, and inclusion remain important considerations, but new arguments about affordability and environmental concerns have moved to the forefront. In this way, the effort to curtail exclusionary zoning is gaining new political allies and giving new life to the possibility of completing the unfinished business of the 1968 Fair Housing Act.

California

As a liberal state, California would appear ripe for an attack on exclusionary zoning; but what has really brought the issue to the forefront is a major affordability crisis. The median home price in the state is more than $500,000, double the national average.²⁰ In San Francisco, two-thirds of homes are now valued at more than $1 million.²¹ Of the ten most expensive real estate markets in the country, seven are in California.²² Census figures show that one-third of California’s renters pay more than half their monthly income on rent.²³ In San Francisco, “we’re on our way to becoming the nation’s first exclusionary city,” says Brian Hanlon, executive director of California’s Yes in My Backyard movement (CAYIMBY), a nonprofit group that fights exclusionary zoning.²⁴

These high prices are entirely predictable. California cities are in high demand, and fenced in from expansion on one side by the Pacific Ocean. But beyond that, California has extensive exclusionary zoning. In more than half the land in both the Bay Area and Los Angeles metropolitan region, single-family homes constitute 90 percent of housing.²⁵ 

As former Georgetown University scholar John Mangin has noted, just as suburbs engaged in classic exclusionary zoning, so, over time, have cities. As urban crime rates decreased in recent decades, and cities became more desirable places to live, urban areas have also sought to discourage development in what Mangin calls “the New Exclusionary Zoning.” Combined with exclusionary zoning in the suburbs, the new policies make it very hard for low-income people to find places to live. “For the first time in American history, it makes sense to talk about whole regions of the country ‘gentrifying’—whole metropolitan areas whose high housing costs have rendered them inhospitable” to many low-income and middle-class families.²⁶ Hanlon draws a direct line between exclusionary zoning and unaffordable prices in California. “We have a housing crisis entirely of our own making,” he says.²⁷ 

For years, political forces allied in favor of exclusionary zoning were considered unbeatable in California and across the country. Civil rights groups and affordable housing advocates might complain about exclusionary zoning, but property owners held considerable sway among politicians and could never be crossed. Equitable development of housing might be advocated in principle, but the reigning ethos was Not in My Back Yard (NIMBY).

But the housing affordability crisis in certain states may be reshuffling political priorities and creating new political allies to oppose exclusionary zoning. In parts of California, the housing crisis is hitting an enormous portion of the population. Among upper middle class millennials, Hanlon says, the question is: “I went to a good school and can’t afford rent? WTF?”²⁸ These people, says Hanlon, are the backbone of his group, YIMBY.

Allied with these millennials are employers in the tech industry who are having trouble recruiting and retaining employees given astronomical housing prices. (YIMBY is backed financially by many leaders in the tech industry.)²⁹ More than 100 CEOs of technology companies have written in support of legislation to reduce exclusionary zoning, arguing: “The lack of homebuilding in California imperils our ability to hire employees and grow our companies,” in part because “the housing shortage places a huge burden on workers, many of whom face punishingly long commutes and pay over half of their income on rent.”³⁰

Many (though not all) environmentalists are also supportive of reforms that reduce exclusionary zoning and increase density. Suburban sprawl means longer commutes, more cars on the road, and more greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, as a general rule, apartments are easier to heat and cool, and are more energy-efficient, than are single-family homes, so curtailing exclusionary zoning ordinances can be good for the environment for that reason as well.³¹

Developers are also generally supportive of efforts to reduce exclusionary zoning, Hanlon said, though less emphatically than one might expect. The biggest developers are those who flourish under the existing rules where “political access is your competitive advantage,” he notes.³² Reducing exclusionary barriers will mean more projects for all developers, but the biggest boon is unlikely to accrue to some of the current developers who make their money because they know how to navigate the system.

Traditional liberal groups are also generally supportive of efforts to reduce exclusionary zoning. Labor unions have an interest in speeding development to create jobs in construction. Affordable housing advocates generally recognize that reducing barriers to construction and increasing supply will contain price increases. And civil rights groups have long seen the ways in which exclusionary zoning has increased segregation.

Last year, these various groups came together and achieved some modest successes. In September 2017, Governor Jerry Brown signed a package of fifteen bills to speed housing development and therefore curb housing costs. Among the legislation was SB 167, backed by YIMBY, which makes it easier to sue cities that drag their feet on development.³³ Small steps forward—like easing restrictions on “granny flats”—resulted in a twenty-fold increase in applications to build such units in Los Angeles.³⁴ 

The newest attack on exclusionary zoning is over SB 827, sponsored by Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco). The bill would eliminate zoning restrictions for developers who wish to build apartments up to eighty-five feet tall (about eight stories) within a half-mile of train stations and a quarter-mile of high-frequency bus stops.³⁵ According to the McKinsey Institute, if local governments rezoned areas within half a mile of transit stops, there would be room for California to build almost 3 million new housing units by 2025.³⁶ 

By focusing on development near transit, Wiener is seeking to merge the affordability and environmental concerns so pressing for many Californians in the service of curtailing exclusionary zoning. The bill has received extravagant praise from some corners. For example, Boston Globe columnist Dante Ramos said SB 827 “may be the biggest environmental boon, the best job creator, and the greatest strike against inequality that anyone’s proposed in the United States in decades.”³⁷ 

In California, not everyone, including some on the left, are as supportive. Some social activists are understandably concerned that new development alongside transit stops could accelerate gentrification and displacement—a legitimate concern that Senator Wiener says he will address as the bill moves forward.³⁸ Likewise, in a particularly surprising move, the Sierra Club has raised concerns that the requirement for development near transit stops could backfire and spur a backlash against public transit.³⁹ Hanlon says the bill is opening a generational split between older environmentalists, who want population limits and preservation of the status quo, and younger environmentalists whose primary concern is climate change.⁴⁰ The biggest opponents of SB 827, says Hanlon, are conservative advocates of local control, and wealthy communities which now exercise exclusionary policies.

But Hanlon says there is also potential new support from an unlikely source—legislators in exurban areas who represent constituents sick of long commutes. These legislators, he said, would like nothing more than to stick it to wealthy white liberals on the coast who drive Teslas and say they are concerned about the environment and inequality but are unwilling to make room in their own neighborhoods for apartments.⁴¹ 

Action on the bill is expected by the fall of 2018.⁴² 

For Hanlon, having a major debate over curtailing exclusionary zoning is itself a big step forward—something that “would have been unthinkable” just a few years ago.⁴³ 

Massachusetts

Massachusetts, like California, has two ingredients that contribute to a favorable climate for curtailing exclusionary zoning: a progressive population and a housing affordability crisis. In a study of housing affordability by Moody Analytics and U.S. News & World Report, Massachusetts ranked forty-fourth of fifty states, making it one of the least affordable states in the country for housing.⁴⁴

The median price for single-family homes in the state exceeds $400,000.⁴⁵ In Boston, the percentage of homes in the metropolitan area that cost $1 million has nearly doubled in five years.⁴⁶ In order to keep up with demand, planning agencies in the state estimate that 435,000 new housing units need to be built by 2040.⁴⁷

As a coastal city, Boston is ultimately limited in its opportunity for growth on one side by the Atlantic Ocean, but researchers have also recognized the region as having relatively high levels of exclusionary zoning.⁴⁸ To its credit, Massachusetts passed an anti-snob-zoning law in 1969, that empowered the state to alter local zoning laws in communities where less than 10 percent of housing stock is deemed affordable. (In 2010, an effort to overturn the law through a statewide referendum was opposed by 58 percent of voters.)⁴⁹ But exclusionary zoning remains a major problem. The Metropolitan Area Planning Council found that in the past ten years, 200 of the state’s 351 cities and towns have not built any new multifamily housing.⁵⁰ 

Reformers see the housing affordability crisis as a major impetus for attacking exclusionary zoning. “The housing crisis in greater Boston has forced the issue,” says André Leroux, director of the Massachusetts Smart Growth Alliance, a public interest coalition of housing and environmental groups. “Tough issues do not get tackled until there is a crisis,” he says. He adds that the competition for Amazon’s second headquarters has fueled the conversation about the need for affordable housing.⁵¹ 

As in California, Leroux says the coalition to promote smart growth and curtail exclusionary zoning in Massachusetts includes environmentalists, affordable housing advocates, and business leaders, among others. In addition, he noted, public health advocates are playing a key role given evidence that housing instability increases health care costs.⁵²

Massachusetts is beginning to see some action. In 2016, the state Senate passed the Great Neighbor Bill, sponsored by Senator Harriette Chandler (D). The bill would outlaw “exclusionary land use practices” that discriminate against low-income and minority families and sets statewide standards for allowing multifamily housing and accessory dwelling units.⁵³ Meanwhile, Governor Charlie Baker, a Republican, has proposed a Housing Choice Initiative, which sets a statewide goal of 135,000 new homes by 2025 and offers some carrots for cities and towns to ease zoning restrictions.⁵⁴ 

The big fight to come is over Chandler’s Great Neighbor Bill, SB 81, which includes anti-discrimination language outlawing exclusionary zoning practices. Senator Chandler is putting housing affordability at the core of her legislation’s appeal.⁵⁵ The affordability crisis cannot be addressed strictly through government funding, she says. “The Commonwealth simply cannot afford to bankroll construction of tens of thousands of units,” she wrote in a March 2018 op-ed. Instead, the state should reduce barriers to development “such as restrictive zoning practices” that “require single-family houses on large lots and prohibit multifamily housing or ‘in-law’ apartments.”⁵⁶ A lot is at stake, says Leroux. “Zoning rules determine what our communities look like.” He expects action by the end of July, when the legislative session is slated to end.⁵⁷ 

Washington

The State of Washington, another progressive jurisdiction with an affordability crisis, is a third site of extensive debate over reform to exclusionary zoning policies, with most of the action centered around the city of Seattle. Washington state ranks forty-sixth out of fifty for housing affordability.⁵⁸ 

Although politically liberal, Seattle has a very high proportion of its land mass set aside for single-family homes. Almost two-thirds of urban land is restricted to single family zoning, a much higher level than found in Seattle’s peer cities.⁵⁹ “Seattle has very low density for a world-class city,” says Margaret Morales, a researcher at the Sightline Institute, a think tank devoted to environmental health and social justice.⁶⁰ 

In making the case against exclusionary zoning policies, progressive advocates tried citing its effect on segregation. Morales of the Sightline Institute produced a report that found that in the areas feeding into the thirteen top-rated neighborhood public elementary schools in Seattle, single-family zoning covered 72 percent of land on average, thereby excluding large swaths of Seattle residents. Morales noted that if zoning ordinances were relaxed to include more small duplexes, triplexes, modest row-houses, stacked flats, and “mother-in-law apartments,” space would be made for nearly 2,500 additional homes within a half mile of the city’s high-performing elementary schools. Exclusionary zoning, Morales concluded, is “an often overlooked structural factor contributing to school segregation.”⁶¹ But Morales observes in retrospect that the segregation argument did not appear to convince many affluent Seattle residents, some of whom were concerned that if more families were allowed to live in their neighborhoods, schools might become more crowded.⁶² 

Instead, a more persuasive argument appears to center around the reality that exclusionary zoning is the enemy of affordability. Seattle for Everyone, a local group that is part of a national YIMBY movement, has pushed the idea that more housing supply will lower housing costs. The Seattle for Everyone coalition includes nonprofit and for-profit developers, labor leaders, environmentalists, and business leaders.⁶³ Advocates point to a government survey which found that three-quarters of respondents would be comfortable with increased density if it made housing more affordable.⁶⁴ 

Indeed, affordability has also been at the center of Seattle’s government-led efforts to reform zoning laws. In 2014, then-mayor Edward R. Murray and City Council members came together to begin developing a Housing and Livability Agenda (HALA) in support of greater density and mixed-income housing. An advisory committee’s recommendations, which were formally transmitted to the mayor and city council in July 2015, include up-zoning single-family zones to increase density as part of a larger effort to expand housing by 50,000 units by 2025.⁶⁵

The effort hit a major roadblock when Mayor Murray resigned after a personal scandal. This development was important, Morales says, because Murray was willing to take on wealthy single-family homeowners. In his absence, Morales says, rich homeowners have begun arguing that the only good housing is subsidized housing, which they know is unlikely to be built in their own neighborhoods.⁶⁶ 

The HALA continues to be part of Seattle’s discussions under a new mayor, though advocates are disappointed that not more has been done to increase density in areas zoned for single-family homes. The most recent effort to increase building in areas zoned as single-family has been derided as merely “a baby step.”⁶⁷ It may be that the affordability crisis needs to grow even worse in severity before the right leadership in Seattle will build on the foundation that Mayor Murray erected.

Conclusion

These experiences in California, Massachusetts, and Washington demonstrate the ways in which advocates for fairness, inclusion, and affordability are navigating the politics around exclusionary zoning. The enduring arguments about the need to address discrimination and segregation—the motivation for passage of the 1968 Fair Housing Act—remain with us. But as millennials grow as a proportion of the population, a new set of arguments around affordability appear to be increasing in salience. When large swaths of the American public—not just the poor and disadvantaged—are finding housing unaffordable, political leaders will have to revisit exclusionary policies that are at once a familiar part of the background of American life and also deeply discriminatory and destructive.

Meanwhile, at the federal level, there is new evidence that homeowners may have loosened their iron grip on public policy decisions, even with conservatives in charge of all three branches of government. In the recent federal tax legislation which passed both houses of Congress and was signed by President Donald Trump, homeowners took two major hits. The cap on the mortgage interest deduction was lowered from $1 million to $750,000 mortgages; and the ability to deduct property taxes, previously unlimited, was capped at $10,0000. These longtime subsidies for upper-middle-class homeowners, the Washington Post noted, were “once thought untouchable.”⁶⁸ 

If the politics of housing has changed among conservatives at the federal level, it seems at least possible that in liberal states, an interesting coalition of interests could effectively question exclusionary housing policies, particularly in regions where rent has skyrocketed and efforts to restrict housing supply are unsustainable. Advocates in California, Massachusetts, and Washington may be paving a new path that will allow, at long last, for policymakers to finish the work begun by the architects of the Fair Housing Act a half century ago.

1. Richard D. Kahlenberg, “An Economic Fair Housing Act,” Century Foundation, August 3, 2017, https://tcf.org/content/report/economic-fair-housing-act/
2. Susan J. Popkin, Samantha Batko, and Corianne Scally, “Why We Need to Expand, Not Restrict, Access to Housing Assistance,” Urban Institute, January 4, 2018, https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/why-we-need-expand-not-restrict-access-housing-assistance.
3. California Yes In My Back Yard (YIMBY), “Let’s End California’s Housing Crisis,” (n.d.) https://www.cayimby.org/sb827.
4. See Lauren Lyons Cole and Andy Kiersz, “Harvard researchers say one-third of Americans overpay for housing – and renters have it worst,” Business Insider, June 17, 2017.
5. Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University, America’s Rental Housing 2017 (2017), p.1, http://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/jchs.harvard.edu/files/01_harvard_jchs_americas_rental_housing_2017.pdf.
6. Mitchell Hartman, “Home prices rise much faster than wages and consumer prices,” Marketplace, November 28, 2017.
7. Mitchell Hartman, “Home prices rise much faster than wages and consumer prices,” Marketplace, NPR, November 28, 2017
8. Quoted in Mitchell Hartman, “Home prices rise much faster than wages and consumer prices,” Marketplace, NPR, November 28, 2017.
9. Brent Toderian, “The Link between Density and Affordability,” Planetizen, April 22, 2008, https://www.planetizen.com/node/30877.
10.  Edward L. Glaeser, “Houston, New York Has a Problem: The southern city welcomes the middle class; heavily regulated and expensive Gotham drives it away,” City Journal, Summer 2008, https://www.city-journal.org/html/houston-new-york-has-problem-13102.html.
11. Edward L. Glaeser and Bryce A. Ward, “The Causes and Consequences of Land Use Regulation: Evidence from Greater Boston,” NBER Working Paper 12601, October 2006, cited in Benjamin Harney, “The Economics of Exclusionary Zoning and Affordable Housing,” Stetson Law Review 38 (2009): 459.
12. Joseph Gyourko and Raven Molloy, “Regulation and Housing Supply,” NBER Working Paper no. 20536, October 2014, http://www.nber.org/papers/w20536.
13. Jason Furman, “Barriers to Shared Growth: The Case of Land Use Regulation and Economic Rents,” The Urban Institute, November 20, 2015, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/page/files/20151120_barriers_shared_growth_land_use_regulation_and_economic_rents.pdf.
14. Benjamin Harney, “The Economics of Exclusionary Zoning and Affordable Housing,” Stetson Law Review 38 (2009): 459.
15. Sam Levin, “’Largest-ever’ Silicon Valley eviction to displace hundreds of tenants,” The Guardian, July 7, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jul/07/silicon-valley-largest-eviction-rent-controlled-tenants-income-inequality.
16. Kriston Capps, “The Trump Administration Just Derailed a Key Obama Rule on Housing Segregation,” CityLab, January 4, 2018, https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/01/the-trump-administration-derailed-a-key-obama-rule-on-housing-segregation/549746/.
17. Solomon Greene and Claudia Aranda, “HUD’s mission to combat discrimination is as important now as ever,” Urban Institute, March 8, 2018.
18. Conor Dougherty, “Getting to Yes on Nimby Street,” New York Times, December 3, 2017.
19. Conor Dougherty and Brad Plumer, “A Bold, Divisive Plan to Wean Californians from Cars,” New York Times, March 16, 2018.
20. Conor Dougherty, “Getting to Yes on Nimby Street,” New York Times, December 3, 2017.
21. Dante Ramos, “Go on, California – blow up your lousy zoning laws,” Boston Globe, January 14, 2018.
22. David Roberts, “A sweeping new bill targets California’s housing crisis,” Vox, February 23, 2018.
23. Conor Dougherty and Brad Plumer, “A Bold, Divisive Plan to Wean Californians from Cars,” New York Times, March 16, 2018.
24. Author’s phone interview with Brian Hanlon, April 20, 2018.
25. Conor Dougherty, “Getting to Yes on Nimby Street,” New York Times, December 3, 2017.
26. John Mangin, “The New Exclusionary Zoning,” Stanford Law & Policy Review, vol. 25 (2014), pp. 92-93.
27. Author’s phone interview with Brian Hanlon, April 20, 2018.
28. Author’s phone interview with Brian Hanlon, April 20, 2018.
29. Conor Dougherty, “Getting to Yes on Nimby Street,” New York Times, December 3, 2017.
30. Technology industry leaders’ letter in support of SB 827, January 24, 2018, https://www.cayimby.org/technetwork/.
31. Conor Dougherty and Brad Plumer, “A Bold, Divisive Plan to Wean Californians from Cars,” New York Times, March 16, 2018.
32. Author’s phone interview with Brian Hanlon, April 20, 2018.
33. Conor Dougherty, “Getting to Yes on Nimby Street,” New York Times, December 3, 2017.
34. Dante Ramos, “Go on, California – blow up your lousy zoning laws,” Boston Globe, January 14, 2018.
35. Conor Dougherty and Brad Plumer, “A Bold, Divisive Plan to Wean Californians from Cars,” New York Times, March 16, 2018.
36. See Jonathan Woetzel, Jan Mischke, Shannon Peloquin, and Daniel Weisfield, “Closing California’s housing gap,” McKinsey Global Institute, October 2016, https://www.mckinsey.com/global-themes/urbanization/closing-californias-housing-gap. See also Liam Dillon, “Get ready for a lot more housing near the Expo Line and other California transit stations if new legislation passes,” Los Angeles Times, January 4, 2018.
37. Dante Ramos, “Go on, California – blow up your lousy zoning laws,” Boston Globe, January 14, 2018.
38. Conor Dougherty and Brad Plumer, “A Bold, Divisive Plan to Wean Californians from Cars,” New York Times, March 16, 2018. See also Roberts, “A sweeping new bill.”
39. Conor Dougherty and Brad Plumer, “A Bold, Divisive Plan to Wean Californians from Cars,” New York Times, March 16, 2018.
40. Hanlon in David Roberts, “A sweeping new bill targets California’s housing crisis,” Vox, February 23, 2018.
41. Hanlon in David Roberts, “A sweeping new bill targets California’s housing crisis,” Vox, February 23, 2018.
42. David Roberts, “A sweeping new bill targets California’s housing crisis,” Vox, February 23, 2018.
43. Author’s phone interview with Brian Hanlon, April 20, 2018.
44. “Affordability Rankings,” U.S. News & World Report, https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/opportunity/affordability. The study of housing affordability looked at median housing prices compared with 2016 median family incomes and mortgage rates. California ranked forty-ninth in housing affordability (after Hawaii). Washington State ranked forty-sixth.
45. Harriette L. Chandler and Jim O’Day, “As I see it: The housing cost crisis,” Worcester Telegraph, March 25, 2018.
46. “Baker-Polito Administration Announces New Housing Choice Initiative,” State of Massachusetts Governor’s Office, December 11, 2017. https://www.mass.gov/news/baker-polito-administration-announces-new-housing-choice-initiative. See also Dante Ramos, “Go on, California – blow up your lousy zoning laws,” Boston Globe, January 14, 2018.
47. Renée Loth, “Zoning reform offers a path to economic equality and social integration,” Boston Globe, January 16, 2018.
48. Rolf Pendall, Robert Puentes, and Jonathan Martin, “From Traditional to Reformed: A Review of Land Use Regulations in the Nation’s 50 Largest Metropolitan Areas,” The Brookings Institution, 2006.
49. William Fischel, Zoning Rules! The Economics of Land Use Regulation (Cambridge, Mass.: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2015), 150.
50. Renée Loth, “Zoning reform offers a path to economic equality and social integration,” Boston Globe, January 16, 2018.
51. Author’s phone interview with André Leroux, February 23, 2018.
52. Author’s phone interview with André Leroux, February 23, 2018.
53. Renée Loth, “Zoning reform offers a path to economic equality and social integration,” Boston Globe, January 16, 2018.
54. Dante Ramos, “Go on, California – blow up your lousy zoning laws,” Boston Globe, January 14, 2018.
55. Renée Loth, “Zoning reform offers a path to economic equality and social integration,” Boston Globe, January 16, 2018.
56. Harriette L. Chandler and Jim O’Day, “As I see it: The housing cost crisis,” Worcester Telegraph, March 25, 2018.
57. Author’s phone interview with André Leroux, February 23, 2018.
58. “Affordability Rankings,” U.S. News & World Report, https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/opportunity/affordability.
59. “Seattle Housing and Livability Agenda: Final Advisory Recommendations to Mayor Edward R. Murray and the Seattle City Council,” Seattle Housing and Livability Agenda, July 13, 2015, pp. 3 and 24, http://murray.seattle.gov/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/HALA_Report_2015.pdf.
60. Author’s phone interview with Margaret Morales, February 21, 2018.
61. Margaret Morales, “One tool for dismantling structural school segregation in Seattle: Better zoning,” Sightline Institute, May 16, 2017, http://www.sightline.org/2017/05/16/one-tool-for-dismantling-structural-school-segregation-in-seattle-better-zoning/.
62. Author’s phone interview with Margaret Morales, February 21, 2018.
63. “About Us,” Seattle for Everyone,  https://seattleforeveryone.org/about.
64. “Seattle Housing and Livability Agenda: Final Advisory Recommendations to Mayor Edward R. Murray and the Seattle City Council,” Seattle Housing and Livability Agenda, July 13, 2015, pp. 3 and 24,. http://murray.seattle.gov/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/HALA_Report_2015.pdf. See also Question 13 of online survey: http://murray.seattle.gov/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/HALA-Online-Survey-Results.pdf.
65. “Seattle Housing and Livability Agenda: Final Advisory Recommendations to Mayor Edward R. Murray and the Seattle City Council,” Seattle Housing and Livability Agenda, July 13, 2015, pp. 3 and 24,. http://murray.seattle.gov/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/HALA_Report_2015.pdf.
66. Author’s phone interview with Margaret Morales, February 21, 2018.
67. Dan Bertolet, “A Baby Step Toward Revamping Single-Family Zoning,” Sightline Institute, March 22, 2018.
68. Kathy Orton and Aaron Gregg, “Tax law to shift housing markets,” Washington Post, December 30, 2017, p. A1.

Tags: zoning, racial discrimination, housing, social justice, fair housing act, residential segregation