State Mandates, Housing Elements, and Low-income Housing Production

In order to create low-income housing opportunities and mitigate exclusionary zoning, in 1968 Congress mandated that municipalities receiving comprehensive planning funds must create a housing element. In tandem, many states mandated that municipal housing elements must accommodate low-income housing needs. After examining empirical research for California, Florida, Illinois, and Minnesota, this review found aspirational success because those states rewarded the municipal planning process. In order to increase low-income housing, this review argues for state housing policy reform. Under US Department of Housing and Urban Development’s revised fair housing rule, which requires an assessment of local data, states can no longer ignore the exclusionary behavior of municipalities

Summary of an Article on Reforming Land-Use Regulations

This article describes how excessive land use control adversely affects the cost of housing. Numerous studies showing the impact of over-regulation on housing costs are cited. The article provides both a historical and philosophical context for public land use regulation and describes key judicial decisions as well as competing public and private interests that shape the regulatory environment.Specific attention is given to the work of the Committee on Government Regulation and the Cost of Housing of the President's Commission on Housing. The various recommendations of the Commission are set forth, the central one being the enactment of state and local legislation to restrict zoning regulation to that which is necessary to achieve what the Commission terms a "vital and pressing" governmental interest. A number of other specific Commission recommendations are also enumerated including density of development, restrictions on manufactured housing, size of dwelling units, growth controls, farmland preservation, development standards and fees, and local permit processing. The article concludes with a strong statement regarding the need for public education as a prerequisite for reform. Copyright American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association.

Will empowering developers to challenge exclusionary zoning increase suburban housing choice?

The municipal zoning process in the United States has come under increasing attack as a tool to create and maintain suburban socioeconomic homogeneity by mandating sprawl-producing single-family detached houses at the expense of less costly townhouses, apartments, and mobile homes. Beginning in the 1970s, the Supreme Courts of the neighboring states of Pennsylvania and New Jersey addressed municipal exclusionary zoning in different ways: Pennsylvania empowered residential developers to compel municipalities practicing exclusionary zoning to authorize market-rate development of all types of housing, while developer empowerment in New Jersey was conditioned upon inclusion of low- and moderate-income units. Using aerial survey and housing census data over a 20-year period, this article finds that outcomes by housing type over a 20-year period in Pennsylvania municipalities around Philadelphia were more diverse than those in adjacent New Jersey municipalities. © 2004 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.