Single-Family Zoning: Can History be Reversed?

Sourced from HOUSING PERSPECTIVES: Research, trends, and perspective from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies

Published: Tuesday, October 5, 2021 by Alexander von Hoffman

Excerpt:

Single-family zoning has a target on its back. Long condemned for creating suburban sprawl and excluding Black Americans, immigrants, and low-income people from residential districts, it has now come under attack for limiting the supply of affordable housing. Declaring that “the housing affordability crisis is undermining the California Dream for families across the state,” California Governor Gavin Newsom recently signed legislation that eliminated single-family zones by allowing up to four units on existing single-family residential lots. The city of Minneapolis and the state of Oregon have already passed similar measures, and planners across the country hope to do the same elsewhere. The history of zoning in the United States, however, suggests that it will take more than simply removing single-family zoning to increase the supply of housing enough to bring prices down.

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