For years, housing advocates have been clamoring for more affordable housing. After the Biden Administration announced a plan that would ostensibly increase the supply of affordable housing by eliminating single-family zoning, also known as exclusionary zoning, many advocates have denounced the plan. Exclusionary zoning isn’t the problem, they say. The problem is the gang that controls the zoning process, they claim, and our gang will do zoning better.
As one example, an OpEd in the Philadelphia Inquirer warns housing advocates to be wary of Biden’s plan because it might encourage gentrification in low-income neighborhoods. Property owners in such neighborhoods, the article states, are “advocating for exclusionary zoning requirements to stop demolitions and protect historic neighborhoods.” The solution, the authors argue, isn’t the elimination of exclusionary zoning. The solution is to put our gang—the local community—in control of zoning.
David Imbroscio, a professor in Department of Political Science at the University of Louisville, writes that eliminating exclusionary zoning will weaken “the ability of inhabitants to determine democratically how urbanized spaces are ‘produced’….” In other words, the community should get to vote on what is built in a neighborhood.
Community control of land use—the very thing that housing advocates are calling for—is one of the purported purposes of zoning. However, these advocates claim that the zoning process has historically been controlled by the wealthy and whites. The advocates want to shift that control to low-income families and non-whites. In short, the current gang has used exclusionary zoning to segregate the poor and “people of color.” Our gang, the advocates argue, will use exclusionary zoning to empower low-income families and non-whites.
It is true that exclusionary zoning has been used to segregate cities. But the proper response isn’t the use of zoning for a “better” purpose. The proper response is to eliminate zoning entirely. The proper response is to restore individual rights, including property rights.
Housing advocates want nothing to do with property rights. Imbroscio, for example, states that eliminating exclusionary zoning would “usurp governmental (regulatory) control of local land use via the imposition of greater market-based allocation….” He isn’t interested in more freedom for housing producers and property owners. He simply wants his gang to be the one issuing dictates because his gang will do zoning better.