The mission of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is to increase homeownership, promote community development and expand access to decent affordable housing without discrimination. Increasingly, we find that many of the constraints to providing affordable housing and to developing communities lie within the communities and their regions in the form of regulatory barriers. Regulatory barriers were exposed as a problem 13 years ago, when the Advisory Commission on Regulatory Barriers to Affordable Housing submitted its report, “Not In My Back Yard”: Removing Barriers to Affordable Housing.

Despite some areas of progress, the Advisory Commission’s finding that exclusionary, discriminatory, or unnecessary regulations reduce the availability of affordable housing remains true today. At the direction of President Bush, I am therefore pleased to publish this update to the 1991 Advisory Commission’s report. Besides illustrating the Administration’s and Department’s commitment to affordable housing, it demonstrates an ability to innovate and reach beyond narrow views of the federal government as funder and regulator. HUD has grasped this opportunity to establish policies that lead and enable state and local partners to address the issues we all deal with on a daily basis.