Why haven't Zoning/ADU changes made much of a difference in SJ?
Remember all the confetti around upzoning reforms in SJ? How advocates claimed that Opportunity Housing/SB9 would relieve the housing affordability crisis? And ADUs would provide much needed density? Well, those proposals passed and... not much has happened. A new report from the Urban Institute explains why (spoiler: it's because the property deregulations were so narrow).
It's one of the most consequential theories in urban policy over the past few decades: The belief that loosening up zoning rules can help cities unleash abundant affordable housing for people at all income levels.
The Urban Institute study, Land-Use Reforms and Housing Costs: Does Allowing for Increased Density Lead to Greater Affordability? found that zoning reforms, introduced over the last decade and a half, which loosen restrictions on development, are associated with a very small increase in housing supply, but not with a reduction in housing costs or with greater availability of lower-cost units
The team identified 180 reforms in 1,136 cities, dealing with things like accessory dwelling units, building height restrictions, lot sizes and allowable uses. Eighty-four of the reforms increased restrictions on development, while 96 reforms reduced restrictions. Further, they checked the reforms against U.S. Census data on rent and population levels and U.S. Postal Service data showing the total number of addresses in a given area. That provided a measure of how housing supply and housing costs changed after reforms were adopted.
The results showed reforms that loosened restrictions were associated with a 0.8 percent increase in housing units at least three years after the reform was implemented. Those same reforms were not associated with any significant effects on rent. On the other hand, policies that increased restrictions on housing development were associated with small increases in rent, according to the paper.
One factor in the seemingly small changes that result from zoning reforms is that the reforms themselves are often much more narrowly targeted than the debates around them would suggest.
Reports of the “end of single-family zoning” in cities and states around the country, for example, often mean that properties in low-density neighborhoods that were previously zoned for one unit are now permitted to have two or three.
“One of the ironies of this debate in general has been that the volume of discourse on this subject is much higher than the actual outcomes in either direction,” says Yonah Freemark, research director of the Land Use Lab at the institute. “It’s one of those situations where you wish the results were more cut and dry — massive changes and big improvements in quality of life.”
This article originally appeared in Governing. Read the whole thing here.
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