The 100-Year-Old Reason U.S. Housing Is So Expensive

NYT OPINION: The 100-Year-Old Reason U.S. Housing Is So Expensive
By Peter Coy
Section: Opinion
Source: New York Times
Published Date: April 14, 2023 at 03:00AM

Exclusionary zoning has created a national housing crisis, but states can help solve it.

It’s Herbert Hoover’s fault. In the early 1920s, as a reform-minded secretary of commerce, Hoover wanted to bring order to America’s chaotic cities and towns, where a lack of controls on land use allowed grimy factories, livery stables and the like to spring up in residential neighborhoods. He convened a committee that drafted a model act encouraging state governments to authorize local governments to do something new: zoning.
Hoover’s brainchild soon became a plague whose effects continue to be felt today. Local governments figured out that they could use zoning to achieve racial segregation. Suburbs adopted exclusionary zoning that prohibited the building of the least costly forms of housing, not just to keep out racial minorities, but also to boost local housing values and save on the costs of educating poor children. Localities lack incentives to take into account the impact of their policies on people who live elsewhere. Growth in the most economically vibrant regions, such as Silicon Valley, is constrained by a lack of housing for employees. People end up trapped in places with more affordable housing but no work.

Read more at: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/14/opinion/housing-nimby-zoning.html