I want to write about the need for a reform in the public housing system and zoning laws. As of right now, the waiting list for public housing is approximately eight years long, and vouchers are not always accepted by landlords when they are actually obtained. Part of the reason is zoning laws, which stipulate how land can be used in order to protect the property values of the area. It sounds like a good idea until you get into what it actually means and what population these laws cater to. By reforming both the public housing system and zoning laws, there would be less homeless people and more prosperity to go around.
Zoning laws have a long history going back into the early 20th century, and to a certain extent, they perpetuate racism and segregation. One notable practice that stemmed from zoning laws was redlining. Redlining denied access and financial services such as mortgages, insurance and home loans to minority peoples on the basis that these populations were hazardous to the community and thus brought down property values. From redlining came blockbusting in which real estate agents would tell residents that a minority family was moving in and that the value of their property would go down if they stayed. Sound familiar? Well, it should because residential housing properties for low income families have been denied for those very reasons.
The block-busting approach included getting some minority families into a neighborhood, warning homeowners that the neighborhood would quickly transition to a minority-dominated community with housing values 20% or 30% lower, and urging people to sell their properties to the real estate agents for merely 5% or 10% below market value. Sell now at a slight loss rather than holding on to your home and having it drop 20-30% in value, or worse. Initially, only the European-American families who had the least tolerance to minority neighbors would take the offers, and that would the most prejudiced and fearful 5% of the population who wanted no minorities at all in their community, but then the next 5% to 10% of white homeowners who would not tolerate 5% would feel compelled to sell and flee. And then the next most prejudiced who would not tolerate 10% or 15% of their neighbors being Black. And so, within a matter of a few years, most of the white households would have departed, and most of their homes would have been purchased by black families. The real estate speculators would have grabbed up properties with discounts because of the white flight, but could sell the homes to Black householders at a higher rate, since Black Americans could only purchase homes in certain areas, and since their supply was constrained, they often ended up purchasing homes at artificially inflated prices.
If you examine the 1940 residential security map of neighborhoods shown above, the community marked as D-7A was marked as “infiltrated by negroes” but most of the other neighborhoods colored red were simply considered low quality communities because the homes in those neighborhoods were older and smaller, and the homes were not as well-kept as the housing in the yellow, blue, or green neighborhoods. Rather than thinking that a community ought to be well-mixed in terms of incomes, so that houses of various sizes and quality could be scattered around a community, the map shown above shows that realtors and banks cooperated with city officials in charge of zoning to create areas of lower-quality housing and areas of higher quality of housing, so that large blocks of houses of similar quality (and price) were clustered together.
There was no thought that bankers and city planning commissions or zoning boards should intervene in the housing market to transform more of the red-zone communities into yellow-zone or blue-zone, nor would they have imagined there could be any benefit for putting lower-quality housing into the green-zone or blue-zone neighborhoods.
By not reforming zoning laws we are prolonging unfair policies which contribute to poverty in certain populations. The current zoning laws reduce affordable housing options, increase housing costs, limit economic mobility and ultimately exacerbate inequality. Zoning regulations such as minimum lot sizes, parking requirements and building height restrictions, make it difficult for affordable housing to be built. Restrictive zoning laws make lower income families live in areas with limited opportunities and fewer resources, making it harder to live in areas with better housing, job opportunities and schools.
Specifically, I suppose you are suggesting that the city incentivize and make permits available for more four-story and five-story structures with eight to ten apartments in each, and commercial / retail space on the ground floor, creating denser populations around core areas to increase demand for commercial enterprises in the core areas of the city. And, additionally, create incentives for more new housing to be constructed in empty lots or replacing derelict structures in the older part of the city. Small lots could be consolidated to create larger lots to allow for larger homes, or even modest multi-family courtyard apartments (buildings shaped as a U with common space surrounded by the three wings of the main structure, often with 16 to 24 apartments within, with doorways serving four-to-six apartments.) In addition, the city ought to cease all construction of roads, water supply, sewer lines or electrical infrastructure that would expand the footprint of the city. All future growth in housing ought to be within the existing boundaries, and ought to be focused on multi-family units, including duplexes and quad-apartments. Sprawl and single homes on large lots are not economically sustainable, as property taxes from such areas cannot cover the long-term maintenance cost of the infrastructure built to support that sort of neighborhood.
See the following resources for more information:
Confronting Inequalities in Springfield.
Maps from around the Midwest showing housing zones from the 1930s and 1940s.
How Housing Policies Keep White Neighborhoods So White (and Black Neighborhoods So Black)
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