Advisory Center for Affordable Settlements & Housing

acash

Advisory Center for Affordable Settlements and Housing
ACASH

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Document TypeGeneral
Publish Date19/11/2015
Author
Published ByMercatus Center at George Mason University
Edited BySuneela Farooqi
Uncategorized

Land-Use Regulation Undermines Affordable Housing in USA

To varying degrees, most municipalities regulate urban development with zoning, density restrictions, and parking requirements. Such policies restrict the housing supply and urban density relative to what it could be in a free market. In this paper, we review the literature that measures the price effects of a variety of land-use regulations. Most of these studies find that both traditional land-use policies and newer policies, such as smart growth and inclusionary zoning, increase the cost of housing. And because housing takes up a larger share of the budgets of lower-income households relative to higher-income households, these policies are regressive—a disproportionate share of their costs falls on the relatively poor.

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