Single-family zoning
[8] In the late 2010s and early 2020s, multiple states including California and Oregon as well as cities like Minneapolis and Charlottesville, Virginia have signed bills, made proposals, or started investigations to effectively eliminate single-family zoning.
[1][3][4][5][8]: 1 Real estate developer Duncan McDuffie was one of the early proponents of single-family zoning in this neighborhood of Berkeley to prevent a dance hall owned by a Black resident from moving into houses he was trying to sell.
By advocating for single-family zoning, McDuffie and other developers at the time were attempting to price out social groups whom they deemed to be less desirable for the neighborhood.
After the US Supreme Court's 1917 decision in Buchanan v. Warley, which declared explicit race-based zoning statutes unconstitutional, the court in 1926 decided in Euclid v. Ambler that it was a legitimate use of the police power of cities to ban apartment buildings from certain neighborhoods, with Justice George Sutherland referring to an apartment complex as "a mere parasite" on a neighborhood.
Restrictive covenants were legal until a 1948 Supreme Court decision in Shelley v. Kraemer made them unenforceable, though they continued to be included on deeds until the 1968 Fair Housing Act deemed that illegal as well.
[6][17] "Single-family zoning became basically the only option to try to maintain both race and class segregation," - Jessica Trounstine (associate professor of political science at the University of California, Merced)[16] Sonia Hirt, professor of landscape architecture and urban planning at the University of Georgia, states that "In the early 1900s, the racially and ethnically charged private restrictions of the late nineteenth century were temporarily overshadowed by the rise of municipal zoning ordinances with the same explicit intent.
[2]: 1 Local public employees like teachers, firefighters, and police officers are often priced out of feasibly living in the communities they serve—even in municipalities that require these workers to do so.
Housing developments in these areas designed to be affordable are frequently only granted an exception to zoning rules on the condition that they gave priority to those either living or working there.
However, evidence suggests that larger, more heterogenous suburbs are more responsive to calls for change, likely due to an already-existing local population harmed by these policies.
"[13] This effect is furthered by the unique reliance of Americans on homeownership and the value of such properties in securing a long-term, stable quality of life according to Monica Prasad, a professor of sociology at Northwestern University.
Additionally, home equity credit lines have become a key way for Americans to bear the cost of crises, like covering medical debt.
According to Sonia Hirt, zoning for detached single family homes in the suburbs provided upwardly mobile Whites more space to raise children in, and prevented the "moral corruption" that more diverse cities risked.
[20] Additionally, surrounding these homes with more like them prevented the existence of adjacent businesses that might bring types of people—primarily ethnic minorities and the poor—to the suburbs that these residents wanted to avoid.
[18] A 2020 study from UC Berkeley stated "The greater proportion of single-family zoning, the higher the observed level of racial residential segregation.
"[1][21] According to Sonia Hirt, zoning, as opposed to centralized city planning favored by most other countries, grew popular in the US because of the opposition to state intervention prevalent in American politics.
[20] Zoning limits the need for bureaucrats by creating broad land-use guidelines for the private market to follow, rather than directing specific developments under centralized planning.
William Fischel, an economics professor at Dartmouth College, asserts that, from the outset of zoning policy, the protection of single-family homes from "incompatible" land use nearby was "paramount.
"[22] While many suburbanites would identify the class mobility represented by a move out to the suburbs as a manifestation of success in the free market, they sought legal protection of their neighborhoods from commercial or high-density residential developments.
[27][28] In February 2021, the City Council of Berkeley, California, voted unanimously to allow fourplexes in all neighborhoods, with Vice Mayor Lori Droste saying that this is "necessary as a first step in undoing a history of racist housing policies.
In 2018, Minneapolis became the first major city in the US to end single-family zoning (which had covered almost 75% of their residential land), by allowing duplexes and triplexes in every neighborhood, as well as higher-density housing along transit lines.
[43] On April 21, 2023, the State of Washington Senate passed HB 1110, which banned single-family zoning in medium to large cities statewide.
