Esta entrevista se editó por motivos de espacio y claridad. Puede escuchar la versión completa en el pódcast Land Matters.

Jesse Arreguín fue elegido alcalde de Berkeley, California, en 2016. Es el primer latino en el cargo y, con 32 años, el alcalde más joven en un siglo. Arreguín, hijo y nieto de trabajadores agrícolas, se crio en San Francisco. A los nueve años, ayudó a impulsar esfuerzos para ponerle a una calle el nombre del activista Cesar Chavez. Este fue el primer paso de una vida dedicada a la justicia social. Después de graduarse de la Universidad de California, Berkeley, se quedó en la ciudad para ayudar en distintas juntas, como la Comisión de Asesoría de Vivienda, la Junta de Estabilización de Alquileres, la Junta de Ajustes de Zonificación, la Comisión de Planificación y el Ayuntamiento.

Como alcalde, Arreguín, que también preside la Asociación de Gobiernos del Área de la Bahía, priorizó la vivienda asequible, la infraestructura y la educación. Hace poco se reunió con el miembro sénior, Anthony Flint, en el Ayuntamiento, donde hablaron sobre esta ciudad de 125.000 habitantes e hicieron hincapié en la vivienda y la necesidad de ampliar la oferta habitacional. La conversación tuvo la ambientación apropiada: desde afuera de las oficinas del quinto piso, llegaban ruidos de construcción.

Anthony Flint: Parece que Berkeley se convirtió en el símbolo nacional de la grieta del “Sí en mi patio trasero/No en mi patio trasero” (YIMBY/NIMBY, por su sigla en inglés). ¿Qué deberían aportar los emprendedores inmobiliarios para incrementar la oferta, brindar diferentes opciones de vivienda y aumentar la densidad en los lugares adecuados?

Jesse Arreguín: Creo que el gobierno tiene mucho que hacer y vemos muchas acciones de liderazgo de parte del gobernador, la legislatura estatal, el fiscal general (que creó un grupo defensor de la vivienda para que se apliquen leyes estatales de vivienda), y los gobiernos local y regional. En los últimos años, en Berkeley, se tomaron medidas importantes para aprobar leyes que optimicen la producción y fomenten una variedad de opciones de vivienda diferentes en nuestra comunidad.

También nos comprometimos con ponerle fin a la zonificación excluyente. Creo que parte del motivo por el que Berkeley es un símbolo del debate que tiene lugar en todas las ciudades del país es porque es el lugar donde surgió la zonificación excluyente. En 1916, la ciudad adoptó la primera ordenanza de zonificación para marcar los barrios en Elmwood District como unifamiliares, a fin de evitar la construcción de un salón de baile. No es casual que muchas de las personas que frecuentan los salones de bailes sean principalmente personas de color. Lamentablemente, la zonificación unifamiliar en Berkeley surgió por la exclusión racial.

Mi forma de ver la zonificación y los problemas de vivienda evolucionó a lo largo de los años porque la crisis en Berkeley y en California empeoró significativamente en los últimos cinco años. Cada vez son más las personas que no tienen vivienda, las tiendas de campaña en las calles, las familias trabajadoras que no pueden afrontar el costo de vivir en la comunidad en la que trabajan y los estudiantes que no pueden afrontar el costo de vivir en la comunidad en la que estudian. El status quo no funciona y debemos hacer algo al respecto.

Creo que los emprendedores inmobiliarios anhelan ver al gobierno tomar un rol de liderazgo. Nosotros también debemos hacer un esfuerzo y dar lo mejor para facilitarles la construcción. Al mismo tiempo, debemos asegurarnos de que brinden beneficios comunitarios, ya que hay nuevas construcciones a precio de mercado, en especial en comunidades en las que predominan el desplazamiento y el aburguesamiento.

Hay casas a la venta por US$ 2 millones en barrios que históricamente son de la población de color. Este grupo disminuyó del 20 por ciento en 1970 al 7 por ciento en la actualidad. Creo que ese es un resultado directo de las decisiones de no construir viviendas que tomó el gobierno y del costo astronómico de las propiedades en Berkeley.

AF: Hablemos del aburguesamiento y de la especulación inmobiliaria, un problema presente en muchas ciudades. Hace poco, Los Ángeles inició un programa de parcelas de banca de crédito hipotecario cerca de estaciones de transporte público. ¿Ese será el tipo de medidas necesarias frente a las condiciones de mercado efervescentes que estamos experimentando?

JA: Creo que sí, y por eso estamos priorizando el suelo público para crear viviendas asequibles. Convertimos playas de estacionamiento en proyectos de viviendas asequibles. Estamos construyendo uno aquí cerca. Son 140 unidades de vivienda asequible y de apoyo permanente, y es el proyecto más grande que hemos construido para la población en situación de calle. Debemos priorizar el suelo público para el bien de la comunidad. De eso no hay duda.

Pero también estoy de acuerdo con que debemos tener en cuenta la banca de crédito hipotecario. Debemos aportar dinero para que los emprendedores inmobiliarios no lucrativos puedan comprar parcelas a fin de que siempre sean asequibles. Debemos analizar cómo podemos apoyar a los fideicomisos de suelo. No se trata de simplemente comprar propiedades, sino de comprarlas para que siempre sean asequibles. Esa es parte de la estrategia de vivienda de Berkeley. No tiene que ver solo con construir viviendas nuevas, sino también con preservar las viviendas existentes que ya son de por sí asequibles.

Creo que debemos enfocarnos en las tres P, como digo a menudo, la producción de viviendas nuevas, la preservación de las viviendas existentes que ya son de por sí asequibles y la protección de los habitantes actuales para que no deban desplazarse.

AF: ¿Cómo podría un impuesto a las viviendas vacantes, similar al que se aplica en San Francisco y Oakland, ayudar a abordar este problema del aumento en el valor del suelo?

JA: Hace poco, sometimos a votación un impuesto a las viviendas residenciales vacantes, que tiene algunas diferencias con el de Oakland porque no se centra en las parcelas vacantes, sino en las viviendas y las unidades residenciales vacantes. Algunas personas dicen que hay cientos de unidades vacantes, por lo que no hay necesidad de construir más viviendas, pero eso es absurdo. Tenemos que construir más viviendas, pero también debemos asegurarnos de que aquellas que no están a la venta vuelvan a incorporarse al mercado.

Cuanto más podamos abordar las acciones de los especuladores y quienes burlan las leyes, como denomino a quienes mantienen propiedades en ruina y vacantes por muchos años, podremos resolver la restricción artificial del mercado, lo que permitirá poner más unidades de nuevo a la venta. Dedicamos mucho tiempo a crear este impuesto a las propiedades vacantes y analizamos en detalle las situaciones en las que las unidades pueden estar vacías por razones legítimas. No buscamos enfocarnos en los propietarios de bienes inmuebles pequeños, sino en los propietarios de inmuebles grandes, ya que parte de lo que vemos es, en verdad, especulación del mercado.

Esperamos que llegue un momento en el que no tengamos que cobrar un impuesto porque todas las viviendas están alquiladas o en uso. Ese es el objetivo del impuesto a las viviendas vacantes; no queremos penalizar, sino incentivar a los propietarios de viviendas multifamiliares a usar las propiedades con el fin correspondiente.

Quiero volver a destacar que esta no es una panacea ni la solución a la crisis de las viviendas y que debemos construir unidades nuevas. Atravesamos una crisis que lleva décadas desarrollándose mediante las acciones deliberadas del gobierno, la segregación racial o las prácticas discriminatorias, la resistencia a construir viviendas y las políticas que limitan su producción.

AF: Como centro de innovación, Berkeley tiene una economía pujante. ¿Cree que será posible que más trabajadores de Berkeley puedan llegar a vivir allí o hay un desequilibrio ya enquistado que debe controlar y aceptar?

JA: Creo que es posible . . . pero para ello habrá que construir cientos y cientos de viviendas, y tendremos que priorizar la construcción de viviendas alrededor de las estaciones de transporte público, mejorar la zonificación de los barrios comerciales de baja densidad y analizar la construcción de viviendas multifamiliares en barrios residenciales. Cada parte de la ciudad deberá cumplir con su responsabilidad de crear más viviendas. Ninguna parte de la comunidad puede aislarse de los nuevos habitantes que se incorporen a la ciudad.

Creo que esa es la esencia de quiénes somos y quiénes decimos ser como ciudad. ¿Somos una ciudad igualitaria e inclusiva? Si lo somos, debemos darles la bienvenida a las nuevas personas que formarán parte de la comunidad. Creamos esas oportunidades para que las personas vivan aquí: personas que vivieron aquí y se vieron desplazadas, personas que trabajan aquí y no pueden afrontar el costo de la vida en Berkeley. Y, por supuesto, hay un beneficio climático si las personas no deben conducir durante una o dos horas para llegar a la ciudad. Eso reduce la cantidad de vehículos en las calles y las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero, y nos ayuda a mitigar el impacto del cambio climático. La construcción de desarrollos habitacionales de alta densidad y orientados al transporte es un aspecto fundamental en la implementación de acciones climáticas. Las políticas de uso del suelo y las acciones para fomentar viviendas de mayor densidad son estrategias de acción climática fundamentales.

AF: ¿Podría hablar sobre la importancia de la seguridad para ciclistas y peatones según su perspectiva de cómo funciona la ciudad y cuál es la situación actual de Berkeley?

JA: Dada la gran cantidad de personas que van al trabajo en bicicleta o a pie y usan medios alternativos de transporte, tenemos que garantizar que puedan movilizarse por la ciudad de manera segura y más simple. Por desgracia, la cantidad de accidentes entre automóviles y ciclistas o peatones es cada vez mayor.

Al igual que muchas comunidades, adoptamos una política de visión cero enfocada en disminuir las lesiones y las muertes por accidentes de tránsito. Estamos analizando cómo podemos rediseñar y reconstruir las calles a fin de que sean más seguras para los peatones y los ciclistas. Obviamente, al ser la cuna de la Universidad de California, hay un gran número de habitantes jóvenes que de manera constante se movilizan a pie o en bicicleta, y debemos garantizar que los estudiantes y los habitantes puedan dejar el automóvil y usar medios de transporte con una menor emisión de carbono.

AF: En cuanto al clima, ¿qué más puede hacer Berkeley? ¿Qué está haciendo la región para enfrentar la crisis climática?

JA: Creo que la mejor forma en que Berkeley puede abordar la crisis climática es, en primer lugar, mediante el reconocimiento de que no es una crisis, sino una emergencia, y estamos viendo los efectos concretos reales aquí en California. En los últimos cinco años, fuimos testigos de algunos de los incendios forestales más devastadores en la historia de California, [y] Berkeley no escapa a las amenazas de los incendios. Es un indicio inequívoco de que la emergencia climática está aquí y no desaparecerá, y tenemos que reconocer que es necesario tomar medidas.

Me enorgullece que Berkeley sea líder en la lucha contra el cambio climático. Fuimos una de las primeras ciudades en adoptar un plan de acción climática. Por supuesto que construir viviendas de alta densidad en terrenos vacíos es una gran parte de ello.

Debemos fomentar más la movilidad eléctrica, ya sea mediante la micromovilidad o con la conversión de vehículos ligeros y pesados a eléctricos. California es líder en esta cuestión. Si bien el estado fijó muchos objetivos ambiciosos para realizar esta transición a una flota de vehículos eléctricos, todavía no contamos con la infraestructura necesaria. Con la ley federal bipartidista de infraestructura y la ley climática que se acaban de aprobar, esperamos que haya una cantidad significativa de recursos disponibles que podamos aprovechar para expandir la infraestructura en California.

Hacer que todos los edificios sean eléctricos también es importante, y Berkeley fue la primera ciudad de California en prohibir el gas natural y exigir que las construcciones nuevas sean completamente eléctricas. También estamos analizando cómo lograr que los edificios ya existentes sean eléctricos, lo cual es más difícil . . . Todas estas cuestiones son importantes, pero también tenemos que adaptarnos al cambio climático . . . ya sea que se trate de cómo abordamos el riesgo de incendios forestales o la subida del nivel del mar. Berkeley se encuentra en la Bahía de San Francisco. Sabemos que, si no tomamos medidas, muchas partes de la ciudad se inundarán y quedarán bajo el agua.

Aquí es donde creo que entra en juego el enfoque regional. Una ciudad no puede resolver todos estos [problemas]. Se ha hecho mucho en la Comisión de Transporte Metropolitano y la Asociación de Gobiernos del Área de la Bahía (nuestra agencia de planificación regional y nuestro consejo de gobiernos), a fin de reunir a las agencias gubernamentales para que analicen estrategias. Creo que es un área en la que el regionalismo y el gobierno regional harán una gran diferencia.

Anthony Flint es miembro sénior del Instituto Lincoln de Políticas de Suelo, editor colaborador de Land Lines y conductor del pódcast Land Matters.

In past issues, I have frequently bemoaned our cultural affinity for simple solutions to complex problems and reminded readers that there is no easy fix for the housing affordability crisis. But in the spirit of New Year’s resolutions—and recognizing that it’s easy to pillory “flavor of the month” solutions and harder to put forth viable alternatives—I’ll take a stab at describing an approach to housing that I think can be effective.

Complex problems need to be attacked on multiple fronts. To confront the affordable housing crisis, we need to do three things, at a minimum. First, we must defend and preserve our current stock of affordable housing. Second, we must identify and fix systemic problems that impede our ability to produce new housing. Third, we need to identify and cultivate new opportunities, incentives, and approaches that expand our productive potential and facilitate production.

We need to build a portfolio of solutions with multiple policies in each of these categories. The most recent issue of Land Lines documents a few ways policy makers are doing that. It includes a feature on the increasing calls for zoning reform at the state level—and local resistance to those calls—by Anthony Flint. Loren Berlin offers a story on a heroic undertaking by the Port of Cincinnati to keep the city’s single-family housing stock available for purchase by local families and out of the hands of outside investors. Jon Gorey examines efforts to preserve and expand manufactured housing, a mostly overlooked but critical component of the nation’s affordable housing supply. For my part, I’ll offer a contribution to the third category, a land-centric approach with great potential to expand production: adaptive reuse of commercial buildings.

According to the commerce industry organization ICSC, there are 115,857 shopping centers in the United States. This includes 1,220 large malls (with an average of around 900,000 square feet of retail space and 70 acres of land); 68,936 strip malls (averaging 13,000 feet of retail space and two acres of land); and thousands of other discount centers, factory outlets, and neighborhood centers (accounting for more than 4 billion square feet of retail space and 400,000 acres of land). Even before the pandemic, a significant share of these centers was imperiled by online retail. Real estate insiders have long predicted that one-quarter of large U.S. malls were at risk of closing, and the pandemic only accelerated this decline. Although vacant malls became convenient sites for mass COVID testing and vaccinations, insiders began to predict that more than one-third of large malls would be vacant or abandoned in the next few years.

Crisis and opportunity are frequent bedfellows. The retail crisis offers what might be our best opportunity to solve the housing crisis. For example, in the San Francisco Bay Area, one of the toughest housing markets in the country, Peter Calthorpe estimates that we could build a quarter of a million new housing units by repurposing underutilized retail space along a single roadway—El Camino Real—that runs some 40 miles from San Jose to San Francisco through 16 municipalities. This would help alleviate the severe housing shortage in the region, and it would create sufficient residential density to support public transit, contributing to state and national efforts to mitigate the climate crisis. And the residential growth might generate sufficient foot traffic to support multiple commercial uses. With this three-fer, the big question is, why hasn’t redevelopment of El Camino Real already begun? Mostly because of multiple manmade, complicating factors.

As I’ve noted before, redevelopment is much harder than development on greenfield sites. One needs to undo whatever had been done on the site, while orienting multiple stakeholders with different interests toward a shared vision. To make matters worse, there are significant manmade roadblocks. First, adverse fiscal incentives interfere with jurisdictions’ willingness to consider changing land uses. Commercial property generates a big share of local revenue, not only through property taxes, but also through the local share of the sales tax and other fees and charges. Residential redevelopment might replace only a small share of the lost revenue. Second, redevelopment projects are difficult to finance. New visionary projects might excite developers; they signal uncertainty and risk for lenders and underwriters. Third, redeveloping a commercial corridor into residential or mixed-use requires zoning changes, which are notoriously fraught. In the case of El Camino Real, 16 zoning boards would need to approve rezoning for the project to proceed. While it might not require unanimous participation among all 16 cities and towns, a critical mass would be needed for the redevelopment to manifest its potential.

Just because it is hard does not mean redeveloping commercial properties into higher-density, mixed-use developments cannot be done. Each of the noted obstacles can be overcome, and all have been overcome in other places. For example, one of the largest development projects in the country, the Tysons Partnership in Tysons, Virginia, is redeveloping a 2,700+-acre commercial district into a transit-friendly, mixed-use development. The project has been underway for more than a decade and already includes 11 multifamily residential buildings. The Partnership plans to quadruple the residential population of the formerly prototypical “edge city,” which housed around 25,000 people but employed around 125,000. They are leveraging four new stops on the Silver Line of the Washington Metro to become the urban center of Fairfax County, hoping to become the poster child for the “new new urbanism.”

In Memphis, a Sears distribution center that was abandoned for almost three decades was redeveloped into a “vertical urban village” called Crosstown Concourse. The 10-story building on 16 acres of land now hosts a charter school, a performing arts center, more than 600,000 square feet of commercial space, and 270 apartments. It is already catalyzing new development in the neighborhoods that surround it.

Outside of Seattle, developers are building a new anchor tenant for the suburban Alderwood Mall—300 apartments with underground parking. This will compensate for the loss of their former anchor, Sears; provide much-needed housing in a hugely stressed housing market; and provide a base of consumers to shop in the remaining stores in the struggling mall.

Although they might not be as lengthy as El Camino Real, there are hundreds and hundreds of underutilized commercial corridors across the country. If we could redevelop them as medium-density, mixed-use developments, we could put a huge dent in the current national housing deficit. There is also no shortage of abandoned or underutilized commercial buildings like Sears Crosstown; half-vacant commercial districts like Tysons; and struggling or abandoned megamalls like Alderwood that offer similar prime opportunities for redevelopment.

By my very conservative estimates, if we redevelop 20 percent of these commercial sites to low- to medium-density mixed-use standards (10 homes per acre), we could add 1.1 million new housing units and preserve millions of square feet of commercial space with a better shot at vibrancy. If we redevelop 25 percent of the sites at 15 homes per acre, we could add 2.1 million housing units. And if we could redevelop 30 percent of the sites at 20 homes per acre, we could add 3.4 million new housing units.

This is not a technical challenge. We cracked the code on adaptive reuse decades ago. We need to simplify the process to facilitate scaled redevelopment and establish new, more effective public-private partnerships to get it done. The public sector needs to step up to de-risk projects through accelerated permitting, co-financing, and smart financial incentives. The private sector needs to quit trying to build on virgin land and find more creative ways to redevelop obsolete sites. If you want to visualize the kinds of developments that are possible, look no further than Julie Campoli’s masterpiece Made for Walking, published by the Lincoln Institute in 2012. With thousands of sites to choose from, we can establish how to produce and reproduce the kinds of neighborhoods described in the book and reduce the perceived risks of development with each successful project.

The beleaguered commercial sector offers most of the elements needed to address our current housing crisis. It has land that is already served by basic infrastructure—water, sewer, power—and that is usually accessible to transit or otherwise surrounded by parking. It often sits in prime locations. By mixing uses, we offer two huge benefits for the commercial side: workers and customers. But the societal benefits are even more profound. So let’s pursue this strategy, along with single-family zoning reform and affordable housing preservation, and see if we can resolve the national housing crisis once and for all.

George W. McCarthy is president and CEO of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. 

Image: A crowd gathers for the opening of Crosstown Concourse, a former Sears distribution center in Memphis, Tennessee, that was redeveloped into a mixed-use space containing a charter school, retail space, apartments, and a performing arts center. Credit: Crosstown Concourse.

Every year, the Board of Directors of the Port of Greater Cincinnati Development Authority makes dozens of resolutions. Most relate to buying or renovating specific properties, approving budgets, creating committees, and other standard orders of business. But in December 2021, the board issued a different kind of decision. Resolution 2021-34 authorized the agency, commonly known as the Port, to proceed with an unprecedented and ambitious plan: securing and spending up to $16.25 million to purchase and rehabilitate a portfolio of 194 single-family rental properties in a handful of largely low- and moderate-income neighborhoods in and around Cincinnati.

It would be a bold move for any local government authority to buy so many properties at once, but especially for an agency without experience owning occupied homes. The Port, jointly established in 2000 by the City of Cincinnati and Hamilton County to promote economic development in the metro area, operates a land bank that manages hundreds of properties at any given time, redeveloping them and returning them to productive use; it also invests in the construction and renovation of single-family homes and commercial and industrial properties. But this would be something altogether different. The vast majority of these homes would come with tenants.

Then again, that was the point: to try something different, to fight back against the institutional investors who have been buying up the area’s affordable housing stock. Today, outside investors purchase about one in five single-family homes in Cincinnati. This mirrors a national trend: institutional investors made 24 percent of single-family home purchases in 2021. The results of this property grab are the same in Cincinnati and across the country: higher rents, lower rates of individual homeownership, and less affordable neighborhoods.

The Port took action because it wanted to keep these 194 properties—which are located throughout the city and county, with many concentrated in the neighborhoods of Price Hill, Westwood, and Springfield Township—out of the hands of corporate buyers. The agency also wanted to preserve the pathways to affordable homeownership that these homes could offer current tenants and other local residents.

A dozen private investors were bidding on the portfolio, and the Port was concerned that most intended to continue with the previous owner’s business model of absentee landlords, bare-minimum maintenance, market-rate rents, and hostile eviction practices, a cash-cow approach for investors that wreaks havoc on local housing markets. The Port team knew it would need to act quickly and aggressively to win the bid.

This is the story of how a local, quasi-public agency pulled off a bit of a coup against powerful market forces, of what comes next when that agency suddenly becomes a landlord, and of the lessons the Port’s experience could offer other cities grappling with increasing corporate ownership of the nation’s limited supply of affordable homes.

Predatory Investors in Legacy Cities

To understand how the Port came to own these properties, it’s important to consider what was happening in Cincinnati when the portfolio became available. The local housing market was, and still is, one with relatively low home prices. In October 2021, the median home sale price was $213,000 in Cincinnati, compared to $378,000 nationally.

This creates the perfect market conditions for institutional investors to swoop in, says Alison Goebel, executive director of the Greater Ohio Policy Center. “Investors think they will get a good return here, especially the ones who are coming from outside of Ohio and are used to seeing higher home prices,” Goebel says. “They see that the home prices here are low enough that they can afford to buy a bunch of properties and make money on the rents, but the prices aren’t so low as to give them pause. They see it as a good deal.”

These market conditions are not unique to Cincinnati, says Goebel, who has coauthored two Lincoln Institute Policy Focus Reports on the challenges and opportunities facing postindustrial cities in the United States (Equitably Developing America’s Smaller Legacy Cities and Revitalizing America’s Smaller Legacy Cities). Also known as legacy cities, such places experienced substantial economic and population decline in the second half of the 20th century. Most of these former economic powerhouses are in the Midwest and Northeast; they vary significantly in size, from very large cities like Detroit and Baltimore to smaller ones like Gary, Indiana, and Worcester, Massachusetts. Roughly 17 million people live in legacy cities, with per capita and household incomes that tend to be lower than those in non-legacy cities, making access to affordable homeownership both more critical and further out of reach.

Both the Port and the Greater Ohio Policy Center are participants in the first national community of practice established by the Lincoln Institute’s Accelerating Community Investment initiative (ACI), which seeks to mobilize investment in low- and moderate-income communities and bring new partners to the community investment ecosystem. “Building stronger community investment ecosystems is essential for achieving more equitable redevelopment in places across the nation,” says Robert J. “R.J.” McGrail, senior research fellow at the Lincoln Institute and director of the ACI initiative. “This work is especially important now, when low-income and moderate-income communities are facing new challenges from deep-pocketed institutional investors.”

The staff at the Port had long been aware of the increasing presence of outside investors in the local housing market. In early 2021, they decided to do some digging. By analyzing property records from the Hamilton County Auditor’s office, the Port discovered that institutional investors owned more than 4,000 homes in the area. As was the case in cities across the country, many single-family homes that had been registered as owner-occupied a decade earlier were now listed as rental properties.

Further research also confirmed a troubling suspicion: an opaque connection seemed to exist among the most negligent property owners. The Port team was able to map networks of limited liability corporations (LLCs), many of which were related to just a few central entities. In some cases, properties were transferred between LLCs multiple times a year. These investor-owned properties were primarily concentrated in low- to moderate-income neighborhoods.

The Port staff and board were still digesting this information when a call came from Colliers, which was managing a portfolio of foreclosed rental homes. The properties had most recently been owned by Raineth Housing, an institutional investor based in Los Angeles that had gained local notoriety for being delinquent on its property taxes and neglecting maintenance to the point where its properties had become, in the words of a lawsuit filed by the city in 2019, a “public nuisance.” Now they were going up for sale. Would the Port want to bid on them?

“My deep conviction is that we should use the powers and expertise of this agency to make the biggest positive impact we possibly can,” said Laura Brunner, president and CEO of the Port. “So when we were suddenly faced with the opportunity to do something that was possible and where, in this case, we saw a moral imperative to act, there was no chance in the world that we would say no.”

Putting a Plan Together

Neither the Port’s budget nor its strategic plan included the acquisition of nearly 200 occupied single-family homes, so the staff had to move swiftly to pull together a bid. After securing informal support from the Port’s board, Brunner and her team met with more than a dozen area organizations active in the housing space to confirm that what the Port wanted to do made sense from their respective positions in the community. Those groups included the Legal Aid Society of Greater Cincinnati, the nonprofit community development corporation Price Hill Will, the Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority, the Home Ownership Center of Greater Cincinnati, and Working in Neighborhoods, a nonprofit founded by the Catholic community Sisters of Charity.

The Port pledged that it would keep rents at their current rates for a year—the average rent for the homes was $750—and work with tenants who were behind on their rent, rather than evicting them. Port staff also reassured the organizations that their commitment to supporting the tenants and their path to homeownership was sincere.

The purchase is an important part of the Port’s effort to address the racial homeownership gap in Cincinnati, where roughly 33 percent of Black households own their homes, compared to 73 percent of white households. “The racial wealth gap is the biggest problem we have in this county,” Brunner says. “We believe that real estate is the fastest way to solve it.”

With support from the nonprofits and after confirming that the portfolio—which included thousands of homes in St. Louis, Kansas City, and Cincinnati—could be broken up to allow the Port to bid only on the 194 in the Cincinnati area, Brunner approached her board of directors for formal approval. She says the board—which has 12 members representing the business sector, half appointed by the city and half by the county—was “incredibly supportive from the beginning.” One of the big questions, though, was how to finance the deal.

“We knew we couldn’t look at every home. But we got some history on the financials, which gave us an idea of what we were dealing with,” says Todd Castellini, the Port’s vice president of public finance and industrial development. Castellini estimates that Port staff got to inspect about 30 of the properties. “We knew the homes weren’t in perfect condition, so we made a very conservative assumption as to what the homes needed. Some needed a lot, some needed a little, and some needed everything in between. Then we did some cash-flow analysis, and then made it even more conservative, and that’s how we got comfortable with the deal. We approached the deal not looking to make money on it but to break even, and we are confident we can do that.”

Port staff concluded that they needed to borrow $16.25 million—$15.5 million to purchase the homes and $750,000 for repairs and improvements, though the Port planned to cover the bulk of those deferred maintenance expenses with rental income. For the financing, the Port issued bonds with a term of 30 months, which would allow adequate time to assess, upgrade, and eventually begin selling the properties.

The Port was able to sell the bonds quickly, with the entire issuance purchased by a local entity that has been buying Port-issued bonds for the last several years. This longstanding relationship was critical, says Castellini: “They understand us. They’ve seen our financials. They know how we work. So it was easy for them to analyze us and the deal and to act quickly.”

Having secured a buyer for the bonds, Brunner and her team submitted an offer to buy the portfolio for $15 million. On the morning of the final bid, at the suggestion of the board, they increased their offer by $500,000 to make it more competitive. Critically, the Port offered a short timeframe for closing the deal, which worked to its advantage. Though three private equity firms also each offered $15.5 million, those bidders required a longer due diligence period, positioning the Port’s offer as the highest and best.

Not only had the Port won the sale, but this quasi-public agency had foiled a dozen institutional investors, a nearly unprecedented feat in the world of real estate investment. “Honestly, I think the acquisition—the whole project, really—is emblematic of many things we have done,” says Brunner. “I’d be wracked with guilt if we had just said that it was too hard or too risky or all the ‘what ifs.’ We have years of history of smaller examples, and this is just a more dramatic one.”

Taking Ownership

Since closing on the deal, the Port’s staff has learned a great deal about the portfolio. Many more of the homes were vacant than was represented, creating both opportunity—it’s easier to fix up empty houses—and challenge, since rental income was part of the financing formula. And many of the occupied homes are in worse shape than expected. Consequently, Brunner estimates that the Port’s improvement costs will likely be at least double what they originally anticipated, bringing the project total closer to $17 million.

LyDonna Turner, who lives with her children and grandchild in one of the houses now owned by the Port, confirmed that she had told the previous landlords about a broken garage door, a collapsed cabinet under her kitchen sink, and a problem with mice, but they never addressed the issues. Her situation is just one example of a backlog of 160 maintenance problems waiting to be addressed when the Port took ownership.

“On the one hand, that’s a financial challenge,” Brunner concedes. “On the other hand, those conditions really reinforce that we needed to be the buyer. We can’t just have all of these houses that are literally deteriorating in these neighborhoods.”

To maintain transparency and gain advice on a multitude of topics, from eviction prevention to homeownership training to potential tenant sourcing, the Port established an advisory committee. The agency also hired an experienced property manager who will handle operations and provide residents with the kind of attention and support they hadn’t received in the past. “It took us a long time to find a property manager willing to be as empathetic and responsive as we are,” Brunner says.

The Port has also partnered with local organizations to offer tenant credit counseling and homeownership preparation initiatives. Goebel notes that the city has a particularly strong nonprofit sector, and says that ecosystem of partners will be essential to helping current tenants become homeowners or finding new homebuyers.

At least 80 percent of the occupied properties were behind on rent payments when the Port took over the portfolio, with roughly 20 percent at least one year delinquent. The Port was able to provide rental assistance to close that gap, thanks to $600,000 of American Recovery Plan Act (ARPA) funds provided via the county’s Community Action Agency.

Though the houses may end up selling for closer to $130,000 than to the initially projected $120,000, they will still cost significantly less than Cincinnati’s current median single-family home price, which has continued to rise and had reached $230,000 by late 2022. And this will all happen without subsidies, Brunner is quick to add.

“Every other house we have ever sold we have had to subsidize,” she said. “Typically, that’s the way we have lived. But our pro forma shows that we can pay off our debt with a combination of rental income and the sale of the homes. Honestly, it boggled our minds for quite some time that 200 houses can be converted to homeownership without public subsidy. But they can.”

Nevertheless, Port staff are exploring the possibility of securing grants from the City of Cincinnati and Hamilton County for down payment assistance and to help lower the homebuyers’ purchase price.

The demand is certainly there, says Turner, who hopes to buy her own home one day. “I do have a couple of friends who have been looking to buy homes but haven’t been successful. So I think it’s a good idea for the Port to buy these homes and to offer them to the tenants first.”

Building Out the Portfolio

Since news of the Port’s purchase broke—and spread, earning coverage in national outlets including NPR and the Wall Street Journal—the agency has heard from receivers and property owners interested in discussing similar deals. At press time, the team was working to acquire a second portfolio of foreclosed homes, and it is eager to expand as much as the realities of financing allow.

With a property manager on board and tenant counseling in place, “it [would be logistically] easy for us to add properties to our portfolio,” Brunner says. “Honestly, I would like nothing more than to buy all 4,000 investor-owned properties that are in our county and get them all out. We may not be there yet, but the opportunity to add that many new homeowners to our market is significant.”

But building out the portfolio in a meaningful way will require corporate or philanthropic involvement, Brunner says. Last year, Brunner and her team participated in an ACI Local Investor Challenge, where they pitched the idea of a fund that could finance more opportunistic investments and, Brunner says, made connections that could help make that fund a reality.

Even as the agency explores the possibility of scaling up, questions remain about the current portfolio. For example, how can the agency ensure that properties remain affordable over the long term? According to Brunner, the Port is considering deed restrictions but has not yet settled on the best strategy for ensuring affordability—and, perhaps more critically, sustaining resident ownership. “We are less concerned with how long the buyer stays in the home and more concerned with who they sell it to,” she says. “We don’t want these homes sold back to investors.”

The Port is also reexamining how best to finance mortgages once the time comes. Port staff initially assumed that partner organizations would originate and service the mortgage loans. They are now considering keeping those activities in house to allow for more flexible underwriting guidelines and more “compassionate” collections, Brunner says. By self-servicing mortgages, the Port could help the individual mortgage holders establish a stronger borrowing and repayment history, and could eventually issue mortgage revenue bonds to repay the debt from the acquisition of the homes. Replacing the acquisition financing with a more traditional mortgage-backed security structure would allow the Port to reach a larger potential market of mission-oriented buyers.

That kind of shift could create a more sustainable business model for the Port and others interested in following the agency’s lead, says McGrail of ACI. “If the Port can move the financing out of the public sector and into the capital markets without risk to the mortgage holder, that becomes a strategy that is fully a market solution, and that feels potentially transformative to me in the bigger picture,” he says. “That feels like an actionable, testable, provable solution for getting the wrong type of property owners swapped out for the right ones.”

A Replicable Model?

For all Brunner’s enthusiasm, she is nevertheless aware of the David and Goliath dynamic underpinning the project and what that could mean for its scalability or replicability. “On the one hand, our acquisition of this portfolio is a big deal. On the other hand, we are talking about 200 houses and $15.5 million. That’s small potatoes in the grand scheme of this national challenge. And the fact that the purchase stands out so dramatically makes me wonder a lot about who the entities are out there that can move the needle on this problem.”

Brett Theodos, senior fellow and director of the Community Economic Development Hub at the Urban Institute, has a few ideas on that front. “There are land banks and sophisticated community development corporations and some development finance agencies that could serve this function,” he says. “With different actors there are different constraints. Most of them can issue bonds, but the question is whether they would work to push this sort of project forward. For those agencies, it isn’t altogether a new flavor combination so much as a willingness to say, ‘Yes, we have this purpose, too, and we are willing to put in the muscle to make it happen.’”

In other words, the Port’s acquisition is likely neither the story of a one-off victory for the public good, nor an easy formula that other cities can follow to facilitate these sorts of acquisitions. But housing experts agree that while some of the circumstances in Cincinnati may be rare, the fundamental strategy is replicable.

“It’s important to remember that this was a portfolio that was [in] foreclosure, so it was essentially a fire sale,” says Goebel. “These types of sales do happen, whether due to foreclosure or because the owner wants to retire, but they aren’t dependable. I’d say that in Ohio, we hear about these sorts of portfolios of single-family rental properties popping up for sale every 12 to 18 months.” When they do become available, it’s not a given that the broker or others involved would think to alert a quasi-public agency.

A second relatively unique piece of the story is the Port’s statutory construct, says McGrail. “The Ohio port authority statute has amongst the most robust set of powers I’ve ever seen in a public finance entity,” he explains. “In addition to giving port authorities the typical public finance powers needed to issue bonds, Ohio’s legislature has given them broad tax powers, allowed them to operate as land banks, and empowered them to be able to hold and redevelop a range of real estate across asset classes, including both commercial and residential property.”

He is quick to add that those powers are made more meaningful by the way Brunner and her senior leadership team use them. “They are a dynamic, multi-credentialed team that has adopted a community-first lens in a way that I think is a little unique for a quasi-public agency, because they do a lot of asking and listening before acting—and that understanding of local needs creates more tolerance for pursuing risk-adjusted goals.”

The Port’s board of directors deserves credit too, says Goebel. They could have easily stopped the project in its tracks. Instead, they not only approved it but also provided crucial guidance on the structure of the Port’s bid. “They need as many kudos for that as they can get,” she notes.

As this experiment continues to unfold in Cincinnati, Theodos urges other cities and investors to consider taking action, noting that plenty of housing markets need this sort of intervention. “The tide—these investors—is coming in quickly, and we are swimming very much upstream,” he says. “The Port is reacting in real time to directly address the problem, which is exactly what we need. We need it again and again, every number of months, and in every city.”

About the Accelerating Community Investment Initiative

The Lincoln Institute launched the Accelerating Community Investment (ACI) initiative in 2021 to mobilize investment in low- and moderate-income communities, especially those that have been excluded from access to mainstream financial and wealth-building resources. ACI began by convening a national community of practice, with more than 40 agencies and institutions participating from 14 states; the group has met virtually and in person to build partnerships, identify new investment opportunities, and share experiences and advice. The initiative has also held three Local Investor Challenges, spotlighting community investment opportunities in Cincinnati, New Orleans, and Texas. These sessions provide community of practice participants the chance to pitch investment-ready projects to the local investment community and get direct feedback—on the pitch and the projects—from potential investors. “The investor summit ACI held in Cincinnati led to a lot of relationships that could potentially allow us to scale our investment much more significantly,” says Laura Brunner, CEO of the Port of Greater Cincinnati Development Authority. “The relationships I have made through them have been invaluable.” In the year ahead, ACI will complete the initial eight-session run of its community of practice and share results, hold additional Local Investor Challenges, and make plans for new activities that support its goal of accelerating community investment across the nation. To learn more about ACI, contact program director Robert “R. J.” McGrail: ACI@lincolninst.edu.

Loren Berlin is a writer and communications consultant specializing in housing and economic opportunity. 

Image: Downtown Cincinnati from the Price Hills neighborhood, where many of the homes purchased by the Port are located. Credit: East Price Hill Improvement Association.

Statewide measures to change zoning at the local level have passed or are under consideration in several states. The aim is to allow a range of more affordable housing options and to create more equitable and sustainable communities. Opposition based on the tradition of local control over land use has been building, however. Find out more about current reform efforts below, and read our article The State of Local Zoning to learn more about the history of zoning and the reasons behind the push for reform.

Arizona. State representatives César Chávez (D) and Steve Kaiser (R) introduced a bill in 2022 allowing multifamily housing or increased single-family-home density on land zoned for agriculture or single-family homes. Following fierce opposition, the proposal was rewritten to establish a committee to study housing supply.

California. In 2022, Governor Gavin Newsom (D) signed a bill eliminating parking requirements near transit and legalizing mixed-income multifamily housing in all commercial areas. That followed the statewide legalization of accessory dwelling units (ADUs) in 2016, and a 2021 measure allowing property owners to split a single-family home or lot into duplexes or fourplexes. Opponents have vowed to reverse that law through a ballot initiative.

Connecticut. A sweeping reform bill passed in 2021 forbids local zoning that caps the number of multifamily housing units or discriminates against lower-income residents, in a state where 90 percent of land is reserved for single-family homes as of right. The package also legalizes ADUs, caps minimum parking requirements, enforces affordable housing targets, and eliminates the terms “character,” “overcrowding of land,” and “undue concentration of population” as the legal basis for zoning regulations.

Maine. A package introduced in early 2022 would have created a state oversight board with the power to override local decisions about critical housing projects; it also would have eliminated caps on growth instituted by municipalities citing “overcrowding.” Those provisions were removed, leaving a law that allows ADUs on land zoned for single-family homes.

Maryland. A 2020 bill to increase housing density in higher-income areas that have a concentration of jobs and access to transit failed to progress, as did another measure requiring municipalities to allow ADUs. Baltimore has considered ending single-family-only zoning on its own.

Massachusetts. Under the MBTA Communities law passed in 2021 and signed by Governor Charlie Baker (R), multifamily housing at a density of 15 units per acre must be allowed by right near transit stations, or state funding for infrastructure and other projects will be withheld. Several communities have challenged the policy, and some have indicated willingness to forgo the funding rather than comply.

Montana. In late 2022, a housing task force appointed by Governor Greg Gianforte (R) recommended opening areas zoned for single-family homes to duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes, and overhauling other restrictive local zoning regulations. The head of the organization representing Montana cities and towns called the effort “straight out of California.” The legislature is expected to consider related proposals this year.

Nebraska. A bill introduced in 2020 and intended to ban single-family-only zoning and allow fourplexes was replaced by a measure that requires only that cities and towns show they are working toward affordable housing.

North Carolina. Bipartisan legislation in 2021 called for allowing duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, and townhomes in any residential zoning district with water and sewer service, and allowing ADUs. That proposal stalled after opposition from local jurisdictions.

Oregon. The first state in the country to ban single-family-only zoning, Oregon enacted a law in 2019 that requires most cities with populations over 1,000 to allow duplexes, and requires municipalities of 25,000 or more to allow townhouses, triplexes, and fourplexes.

Utah. A measure passed in 2022 leverages state funding for local zoning reform that makes it easier to build middle-income housing and transit-oriented development. In late 2022, the state legislature was also considering withholding state funds for communities that lack a housing master plan, and overriding local zoning and hearings processes to allow landowners to build affordable housing.

Virginia. Governor Glenn Youngkin (R), who has been critical of NIMBYism, released a plan in November that recommends linking state funding to local housing plans and investigating comprehensive zoning reform.

Washington. Legislation under consideration would allow greater density at transit stations and permit two-, three-, and four-family homes in areas now zoned for single-family homes.

Anthony Flint is a senior fellow at the Lincoln Institute, host of the Land Matters podcast, and a contributing editor to Land Lines.

Image: Accessory dwelling unit in Seattle. Credit: Sightline Institute via Flickr CC BY 2.0.

Making the case that antiquated rules governing development in the United States are driving up housing prices amid a growing affordability crisis, advocates for statewide zoning reform are seeking to build on recent successes from California to Connecticut. But statewide mandates are encountering resistance from those defending local control of land use, a system that has prevailed for a century.

While the rule changes being implemented or considered are at a technical level previously only familiar to urban planning professionals, they could have an outsized impact—and not just on the availability of housing. Zoning, its critics say, has also locked in racial segregation and perpetuated environmentally unsustainable land use patterns.

The changes in question include banning single-family-only zoning; allowing multifamily housing in more places, including adjacent to transit stops; reducing or eliminating costly minimum parking requirements; and lifting prohibitions on accessory dwelling units (ADUs).

Efforts to reform zoning have gained momentum in part because the issue is surprisingly bipartisan, attracting supporters ranging from free market conservatives who favor streamlining government regulation to progressives concerned about homelessness and seeking to right racial wrongs.

Not only blue states along the coasts, but others regarded as red, such as Utah, are engaged in some type of zoning reform. In Virginia, Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin has been speaking out against NIMBYism, the “not in my backyard” opposition by established residents to new housing development. To address the rising costs residents face, he said shortly after taking office in 2022, “we must tackle the root causes: unnecessary regulation, overburdensome and inefficient local governments, restrictive zoning policies, and an ideology of fighting tooth and nail against any new development.”

The biggest driver of reform has been the lack of affordable housing, which is wreaking havoc with local economies. Home prices rose more than 20 percent nationwide from March 2021 to March 2022. In June 2022, Realtor.com reported that rents in the country’s 50 largest metro areas had jumped 26.6 percent since 2019, the latest in a string of record increases. According to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, 30 percent of all U.S. households had unaffordable rent or mortgage payments in 2020, defined as exceeding 30 percent of monthly household income; a growing number of Americans spend half their income on housing. Workers often can’t live near their places of employment; outright homelessness is increasingly visible.

“Even people who are the beneficiaries of the California housing crisis, maybe folks who bought a home a few decades ago [and have seen their home values appreciate], they’re finding that their adult children can’t live within two or three hours of them. They’re finding that if they want to retire, they probably have to leave the state,” said M. Nolan Gray, author of Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It. Whether in California or Utah, Gray said, residents are confronting similar “housing affordability issues that are affecting the middle class—and they’re looking for solutions.”

Still, the effort to apply new standards statewide is facing fierce political opposition at the local level, where land use decisions have historically been made, and where the right to set zoning has been heavily guarded since higher levels of government granted that power a century ago. The resistance warns against “imperialistic rezoning from state capitals,” in the words of one critic, framing the mandates aimed at increasing housing supply as inappropriate state preemption.

Responding to those who oppose any change in local regulations for development, state lawmakers have watered down statewide reform efforts by adding opt-outs or removing penalties for noncompliance. In some cases, the stirrings of reform have been shut down entirely. In Nebraska, a bill requiring municipalities with over 5,000 residents to allow fourplexes and other “missing middle” housing was replaced by a measure requiring only evidence that local jurisdictions were working on creating more affordable housing. (See our state-by-state guide to recent reforms in a dozen states.)

In Massachusetts, the program known as MBTA Communities—signed by Republican Governor Charlie Baker in 2021—requires cities and towns to allow multifamily housing near transit stations by right, with a minimum density of 15 units per acre. But many communities have challenged that mandate—and have indicated they are prepared to do without the state funding that will be withheld if they don’t comply.

If the key to any public policy reform lies in implementation, that may be especially true with something as entrenched as local control over land use. States intent on reform must convince localities that changing zoning in targeted ways is achievable and will be beneficial. Technical assistance and education, facilitated by state agencies and nonprofit organizations, will help, said Massachusetts-based researcher Amy Dain, who has conducted research for the Lincoln Institute and has documented how suburban communities around Boston have erected a “paper wall” of bureaucracy that hobbles attempts by developers to build multifamily housing.

In the case of the MBTA Communities act, she said, “the state is giving cities and towns lots of flexibility in deciding how to draw districts [of greater density] and how to write the requirements. It’s at the local level that the sites for transit-oriented multifamily housing development are selected and the dimensional requirements for new housing are established.”

The success of statewide zoning reform in the future may well hinge on the promise of that kind of state-local collaboration.

THOUGH MANY CITIES have been masterfully planned and designed over the centuries, zoning is a 20th century phenomenon. The need for a framework of rules and regulations emerged as a reaction to explosive growth in U.S. cities after the turn of the century, concurrent with industrialization and the growth of manufacturing; massive immigration; and advances in technology, particularly in the transportation sector, including the streetcar, subway, and automobile.

The call for zoning was part of a progressive campaign to relieve congestion and to improve living conditions and public health—to make sure a tannery was not located right next door to a rooming house, for example. But it was also designed to control where immigrants and people of color could live. The first U.S. cities to create zoning included New York City and Berkeley, California, both circa 1916.

In 1923, the Standard State Zoning Enabling Act provided model legislation states could adapt to grant municipalities the power to dictate land uses. Drafted by a Department of Commerce committee that had been assembled by Herbert Hoover and included Frederick Law Olmsted, the enabling act was adopted by all 50 states. The landmark 1926 Supreme Court case Euclid vs. Ambler Realty, which saw a realty company sue for the right to develop land across several newly implemented zoning districts in an Ohio town, affirmed that zoning was a local responsibility, and indeed a police power to reduce conflicts and improve public health.

The result was that more than 30,000 local governments developed their own regulation of land uses and structures, including allowable height, bulk, floor-to-area ratios, lot sizes, and setbacks. A common approach was separating commercial, industrial, and residential uses, designating parcels by category in multicolored zoning maps that are still in use to this day. On the residential side, zones for single-family homes, often on large lots, were most prevalent; areas set aside for multifamily housing, including even two-family structures, were much smaller, if they existed at all.

Although communities used similar approaches, zoning became a highly decentralized system in which each jurisdiction developed particular rules in complicated formats. “Even for an expert, these zoning codes can be hard to read, and it’s nearly impossible to compare them to each other,” said Cornell University law professor Sara Bronin, who was part of a major zoning reform effort in Connecticut and is now leading the development of the National Zoning Atlas. That crowdsourced project is working to create a user-friendly, interactive zoning map of each state in the country.

ABOUT THE NATIONAL ZONING ATLAS

When Sara Bronin, now a Cornell University professor, first got involved in zoning reform in Connecticut, a clear need emerged: identifying what, exactly, the local land use regulations were in the state’s 169 cities and towns. Finding the answer took reviewing 2,622 zoning districts and more than 30,000 pages of text, and using spreadsheets, maps, and geographic information systems to organize everything. That exercise inspired Bronin and her small team of collaborators to launch a more ambitious project: documenting local zoning practices in all 50 states to create a National Zoning Atlas.

The aim of this crowdsourced project is to translate and standardize the country’s zoning codes, building an interactive online map that’s easy for the public to use and understand. The National Zoning Atlas seeks to help broaden participation in land use decisions, identify opportunities for zoning reform, and narrow an information gap that currently favors land speculators, institutional investors, and homeowners over socioeconomically disadvantaged groups. It will also illuminate regional and statewide trends and provide a resource for national planning efforts related to housing production, transportation infrastructure, and climate change.

A growing collaborative of researchers is currently working in 14 states, from New Hampshire to Hawaii. The team welcomes collaborators from all states. To learn more, visit www.zoningatlas.org.

The intensely local nature of zoning created another attribute that has helped effectively lock the rules in place: significant constituencies of established residents who refer to the rules to block new development. Zoning—as well as environmental regulations and, in some cases, historic preservation restrictions—was used as a shield in separated-use suburbs dominated by single-family zoning and in cities, where residents grew wary of redevelopment in tightly knit neighborhoods. Through the 1960s and 1970s, local neighborhood organizations grew stronger using veto power over a wide variety of redevelopment proposals, said Jacob Anbinder, who is writing a dissertation at Harvard about local control and community organizing.

The combination of complicated rules and staunch defenders made the system seem impenetrable. But some of the first challenges to the notion that zoning was sacrosanct—suggestions that local land use regulations had become calcified and obsolete—began emerging about 25 years ago, primarily on an environmental basis.

The smart growth and New Urbanism movements contended that the separation of uses was fostering environmentally damaging car dependence and had made mixed-use, walkable living arrangements essentially illegal.

“If you look at historical prezoning neighborhoods, the standard would be that you would have life’s daily necessities within walking distance,” said Gray. “You might have a corner grocery, you might have a corner barbershop, you might have a corner medical office, or at least cities could achieve densities such that transit would actually work. There was density high enough to be able to take a bus or even to take a train.

“Zoning makes all of that very difficult,” he said. “It really privileges the most environmentally inefficient land use patterns. It’s clear, when you look at the data, that many Americans actually want to live in an apartment, in a walkable neighborhood where they might not have a car—and zoning, in many cases, criminalizes that.”

In what might be described as an initial and more subtle attempt to get communities to reassess their zoning, planner promoting alternatives to sprawl introduced the idea of the “form-based code,” which reoriented zoning around the composition and massing of buildings, instead of focusing on the use and activities that go on inside. Others tried to help small and midsized cities make incremental adjustments that enabled more urban landscapes. “Meeting local governments where they are” was the mantra for the Project for Code Reform initiative launched by the Congress for the New Urbanism in 2016, said Lynn Richards, who was president of the organization at the time. “It was not intended as a full audit, but rather identifying the biggest little change a community could make to improve the regulatory environment in that place,” she said, adding that incremental changes were instituted in Michigan, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin.

For the most part, however, the status quo remained, even as public awareness of the role of zoning in perpetuating racial segregation grew, adding to concerns about its impact. Historical and demographic research around the country illustrated the damaging and lasting impacts of land use decisions in places from Los Angeles to Manchester, New Hampshire. Local governments that had been handed the responsibility of overseeing land use had failed to ensure equitable and sustainable communities, according to this critique, and were showing no signs of changing their ways.

“A century of decentralized and isolated local control of land produced unacceptable levels of racial and economic segregation, urban sprawl that contributed to the climate crisis, and an almost unassailable housing crisis,” wrote Lincoln Institute President George W. McCarthy in an essay in the October 2022 issue of Land Lines. “It is sometimes necessary for higher levels of government to supersede the decisions of lower levels of government to promote general welfare or address negative externalities that are artifacts of uncoordinated actions at lower levels.”

A FEW CITIES, including Minneapolis and Portland, have been in the vanguard, taking steps to ban single-family-only zoning, for example. A framework of incentives and penalties encouraging denser and more inclusive development has also been floated at the federal level under the Obama and Biden administrations.

The rationale for statewide standards, however, has become increasingly clear: to eliminate the patchwork of different policies and regulations within metropolitan regions. Some communities might allow ADUs, for example, while others prohibit them. A more uniform regulatory regime would level the playing field, reflecting actual homebuying and renting aspirations and making it possible to develop a responsive regional approach to issues like the current affordability crisis.

The zoning reform measures that have passed or are under consideration range from relatively small tweaks, such as legalizing ADUs or eliminating minimum parking requirements, to more significant preemptions that allow multifamily housing, whether two-, three-, or four-family townhomes or larger apartment buildings, in areas zoned exclusively for single-family homes.

California has been a leader, first legalizing ADUs statewide, then allowing duplexes and lot splits in single-family zones, and mixed-income multifamily housing in all commercial areas, while also eliminating minimum parking requirements at transit stations. Connecticut is close behind, with requirements that cities and towns “affirmatively further fair housing” in their zoning, promote diverse housing options, legalize ADUs, and cap minimum parking requirements. The state’s newly adopted guidelines also prevent towns from enacting zoning that discriminates by income, caps the amount of multifamily housing in a community, or charges unreasonable or different fees for multifamily affordable housing.

An additional notable feature in Connecticut is the removal of the terms “character,” “overcrowding of land,” and “undue concentration of population” from state law as legal bases for zoning regulations. In their place, the bill allows towns to consider only the “physical site characteristics” of a district.

Reformers aspire to dig deeper on the issue of process, which has been shown to hinder and discourage new development by making it prohibitively costly. Recommendations include a “shot clock” limiting the length of the permitting process, and exemptions from lengthy review for small or mid-sized projects that clearly don’t have a major environmental impact.

OTHER STATES MULLING ZONING REFORM have included elements from the California and Connecticut reforms. But a pattern has emerged in which lawmakers propose tough measures—disallowing single-family-only zoning, for example—and then, in the face of opposition, prescribe milder reforms, such as lifting prohibitions on renting out carriage houses or apartments over garages.

Lawmakers appear to be responding to a predictable backlash against state mandates, which is premised on the basis that jurisdictions should not be subjected to blanket requirements that don’t fully consider local conditions.

Aaron Renn, a conservative urban analyst and contributing editor for City Journal, said he is “generally supportive of zoning liberalization as a tool to address housing supply shortages,” but is wary of putting states in control of local land use decisions because of the perceived risk that it will lead to one-size-fits-all policies. He expressed concern that state-level advocates of reform “argue that in most cases the upzoning won’t mean wholesale replacement of single-family homes with apartment buildings, but they won’t countenance any limits,” like putting a cap on the number of fourplexes in a neighborhood, and he worries that terms like “transit corridor” aren’t clearly defined.

Kimberly Fiorello, a Republican state representative for the Connecticut towns of Stamford and Greenwich, put it more bluntly, warning against the zoning reform package that was ultimately adopted by the state.

“Handing over local zoning control to ‘experts’ in Hartford should be an affront to anyone who believes in self-government and the right to private property,” she wrote in 2020, when zoning reform efforts led by state officials and the nonprofit coalition Desegregate Connecticut began gaining momentum. Fiorello and other Republicans even called at one point for a state constitutional amendment “to permit municipalities to enact and enforce zoning restrictions without regional or state interference.”

Preemption, in this case overriding local government, has been established as precedent in the area of housing and withstood legal challenges. In Massachusetts, Chapter 40B overrides local zoning to fast-track projects if 25 percent of the proposed units are affordable, in communities where the affordable housing stock is less than 10 percent. The landmark Mount Laurel case, first decided by the New Jersey Supreme Court in 1975, similarly required cities and towns to add their “fair share” of affordable housing as a priority that trumps local land use restrictions. In California, municipalities that don’t meet affordable housing goals are subject to the “builder’s remedy,” wherein developers can propose any housing project and it is automatically approved.

States pursuing meaningful reform thus must strike a balance between forcing compliance through penalties and other means, and supporting cities and towns more gently through the implementation process, assuring them they remain in control as they open up to more housing.

“Zoning has endured because it is embraced by local communities and local people. Planners should work to hold on to that enthusiasm, to give local communities local control, while supporting the myriad efforts to address the shortcomings of zoning in its current form,” said Harvey M. Jacobs, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Radboud University Nijmegen, in the Netherlands.

“Do localities need a nudge? Yes. Will they like it? No,” said Jacobs, who has conducted research with the Lincoln Institute on public policy and property rights. He predicts “somewhat of a cat-and-mouse game, between state-imposed standards and local implementation.”

IN THE MEANTIME, cities are acting on their own, with or without state mandates. The list of places approving reforms is growing, from communitywide upzoning in Walla Walla, Washington, to the approval of ADUs and elimination of parking requirements in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Cambridge, Massachusetts, recently joined the growing list of communities doing away with parking minimums.

Advocates are hoping to build on that momentum, relying in part on data analysis following implementation. Understandably, since this wave of reform efforts is relatively recent, there are few studies that show changes in zoning directly result in more housing affordability or other desirable outcomes.

An analysis of rents for freshly authorized ADUs by the Southern California Association of Governments showed the small-scale housing in five Los Angeles–area counties was affordable to those earning 80 percent of area median income and lower—although in many cases no rent was charged at all, as family members moved in to relieve overcrowding. “That’s essentially affordable housing production at scale and at no cost to the taxpayer,” said Gray, the Arbitrary Lines author. “That’s all just because of removing some of these zoning barriers to ADUs.”

Two working papers by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University determined that zoning that allows multifamily housing is associated with substantially larger population shares of Black and Hispanic residents than zoning for single-family housing—a combined nine percent higher in Greater Boston, and 21 percent in the Twin Cities metro area.

Bronin, who is leading the National Zoning Atlas effort at Cornell, said research she is about to publish found that simply eliminating minimum parking requirements could enable the creation of thousands of additional units of housing in 15 Connecticut cities. The greatest potential was in Bridgeport, the state’s largest city, which eliminated its minimum parking requirements for housing in 2022. “We’re hopeful that will unlock new investment in Bridgeport, which is pretty close to New York City and, like several of the large Connecticut cities, is struggling economically—but that one single reform has a lot of promise for the creation of new housing, which in turn will drive down prices,” Bronin said.

Though there are conflicting studies, some research suggests that increasing housing supply, even at the high end, can ultimately have a downward impact on rents and home prices. The growing consensus among policy makers and economists is that adding different types of housing across a broad region will be beneficial in the long run.

In that sense, those clamoring for even incremental zoning reform are faced with a challenge akin to climate change, which would continue even if all emissions could be halted tomorrow. Market conditions won’t change quickly, but acting now, the argument goes, will set the stage for a less disastrous lack of affordability in the future.

The case can be made on the basis of that long-term economic viability, said Dain, referring to the Massachusetts mandate for upzoning in areas around transit stations. “This isn’t really a technical change, it’s a major adaptive effort for the whole region—to make sure people will all have homes and that the region grows in a sustainable, resilient way.”

Bronin agrees that modifying rules established long ago can lead to big-picture payoffs—even as that is a complicated message to convey, since zoning has for such a long time remained unseen in the background.

“Zoning is the most significant regulatory power of local government,” she said. “It not only governs where we can put housing and factories and parks and shops—it actually has significant impacts on the economy, and even, I think, the very structure of our society.” Recalling the multiyear reform effort in Connecticut, she noted that “when we started . . . we knew that there was a place in the public conversation for zoning and the time was right to link reform of our outdated zoning laws with much better social and economic outcomes that would be beneficial to Connecticut as a whole.

“I think we surprised people in the traction that it gained and the allies that it gained,” she said, noting that Connecticut is known as “the land of steady habits.” Because that culture ultimately opened up to change, she said, she has hope for the reform attempts underway in other places: “I’m pretty optimistic about these efforts.”

Anthony Flint is a senior fellow at the Lincoln Institute, host of the Land Matters podcast, and a contributing editor to Land Lines.

Image: A protester urges Connecticut lawmakers to “keep zoning local” in 2021, shortly before the state passed comprehensive zoning reform legislation. Credit: Kassi Jackson, Hartford Courant/Tribune News Service.

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 Land Matters Podcast: The Quest for Zoning Zen

En ocasiones, se considera que la zonificación es un elemento atemporal de las políticas de suelo y la planificación. Y lo es. La zonificación se originó en Asia hace más de tres milenios. En aquella época, se usaba para designar los usos del suelo más allá de las murallas de las ciudades o para separar a las personas por castas. La práctica se adoptó más recientemente en los Estados Unidos con fines similares. En el s. XXI, es uno de los mayores impedimentos para la sostenibilidad de las ciudades estadounidenses.

Hace varios años que expreso mi opinión sobre el control hiperlocal del suelo. Hace una década, en un panel con Nic Retsinas, entonces director del Joint Center for Housing Studies de Harvard, opiné que el gobierno local y los controles del uso del suelo eran “dinosaurios” que hacían casi imposible coordinar la planificación del transporte regional y los esfuerzos en materia de vivienda asequible. Nic nos recordó a mí y a los asistentes que había fuerzas políticas y económicas poderosas que se interponían con firmeza en el camino hacia la reforma de las políticas de suelo. También señaló que los dinosaurios vivieron millones de años antes de extinguirse, y que se extinguieron debido a la colisión de un asteroide con la Tierra, no a causa de la selección natural.

Pero ahora, el mundo de las políticas de suelo presenta algo casi tan raro como un asteroide que cambiará el planeta: el acuerdo bipartidista. Numerosos estados azules, rojos y púrpuras aprobaron leyes para impedir la zonificación local y así avanzar en objetivos políticos esenciales, o están contemplando la posibilidad de hacerlo. ¿Por qué se dio este cambio repentino? Porque muchos gestores de políticas ahora entienden que la crisis nacional de la vivienda asequible no puede abordarse sin cambios estructurales en las reglas. Otros gestores de políticas saben que no podemos abordar una de las manifestaciones más negativas de la zonificación (la segregación espacial por raza y clase) sin una acción afirmativa agresiva.

Si bien hay un acuerdo bipartidista sobre la necesidad de una reforma, las motivaciones de los gestores de políticas son muy diferentes. Los partidarios de la derecha argumentan que la crisis de la vivienda es producto del exceso de regulaciones que ahogan la producción de viviendas. Estos críticos creen que la reforma de la zonificación desatará fuerzas del mercado que harán frente a la crisis de la vivienda y acelerarán la producción de unidades nuevas. Los partidarios de la izquierda argumentan que no podemos construir viviendas asequibles en los lugares que más lo necesitan, debido a las políticas de suelo que excluyeron a las personas por motivos de raza e ingresos durante generaciones, como el tamaño mínimo de las parcelas y la prohibición de las viviendas multifamiliares. Según ellos, la reforma de la zonificación posibilitará la construcción de viviendas asequibles en lugares que presentan “grandes oportunidades”, con buenas escuelas y trabajos decentes.

El poder del Estado para impedir la zonificación local no es nuevo. En 1969, Massachusetts aprobó el Capítulo 40B, una medida que le permite al Estado anular la zonificación local y aprobar desarrollos multifamiliares de ingresos mixtos en jurisdicciones con pocas viviendas asequibles. Aunque contribuyó a fomentar el desarrollo de viviendas asequibles en algunos suburbios adinerados, no supuso un cambio significativo y pocos estados se plantearon seguir su ejemplo, hasta hace muy poco.

Ahora, unos diez estados están dispuestos a impedir la zonificación local a fin de permitir el desarrollo de múltiples unidades de vivienda en lotes que actualmente están zonificados para casas unifamiliares. Por ejemplo, en Connecticut, Nebraska, Utah, Oregón, Maryland, California y Washington, se permite añadir unidades accesorias (ADU, por su sigla en inglés) a los lotes unifamiliares; en Virginia, Utah, Nebraska, Washington y Maryland, se permite la construcción de “viviendas intermedias”, es decir, casas adosadas para entre dos y cuatro familias, en lotes destinados a viviendas unifamiliares; y en Oregón, California, Virginia, Maine y Washington, se impide por completo que los gobiernos locales prohíban la construcción de viviendas multifamiliares en parcelas unifamiliares. Recientemente, Massachusetts y California también ordenaron la recalificación en comunidades con mayor acceso a servicios de transporte. Está claro que el control local sobre el uso del suelo ya no es algo sacrosanto.

Si bien la zonificación es una práctica milenaria, tiene menos de un siglo en la mayor parte de los Estados Unidos. Los estados comenzaron a otorgarles a los municipios el poder de definir el uso del suelo en la década de 1920, en función de la Ley de Habilitación de Zonificación Estatal Estándar dictada por el Departamento de Comercio en 1923. Pero los estados también pueden dar marcha atrás una vez que otorgan derechos. A veces, resulta necesario que los niveles más altos de gobierno pasen por alto las decisiones de los niveles más bajos, a fin de fomentar el bienestar general o abordar cuestiones externas negativas que son producto de acciones no coordinadas de estos niveles más bajos de gobierno. Muchas veces, los esfuerzos estatales para desestimar a los gobiernos locales no son bienintencionados; por ejemplo, cuando los gestores de políticas estatales restringen los impuestos a la propiedad inmobiliaria para congraciarse con los votantes. En el caso de la zonificación, la necesidad de que el estado actúe está claramente justificada.

Deberíamos celebrar el hecho de que estamos yendo en la dirección correcta y que se está generando la voluntad política para abordar un desafío que, hasta hace poco, se consideraba imposible. Pero aún nos queda mucho por aprender sobre la zonificación. Cada estado, y en muchos casos cada jurisdicción dentro de él, desarrolló sus propias convenciones de zonificación, lo que hace que sea muy difícil comparar las prácticas. También hace que sea casi imposible comprender las implicaciones de las decisiones de zonificación sobre el valor del suelo y los patrones de desarrollo, o cómo la reforma de la zonificación podría abordar desafíos grandes, como la crisis de la vivienda, la desigualdad espacial o la expansión urbana descontrolada. Esto también está cambiando.

El año pasado, un pequeño equipo de visionarios en la Universidad Cornell, liderados por la profesora Sara Bronin, crearon un mapa de zonificación para el estado de Connecticut. Mediante hojas de cálculo, mapas y sistemas de información geográfica, el equipo documentó de manera increíblemente detallada las prácticas de zonificación de 180 jurisdicciones con 2.622 distritos de zonificación. Asombrosamente, esto requirió la revisión de más de 30.000 páginas de texto en las que se describían las prácticas de zonificación de un solo estado.

Esta tarea hercúlea aparentemente no fue un desafío lo suficientemente grande para este intrépido grupo de investigadores. Recientemente, el equipo de Cornell emprendió un esfuerzo para crear un Mapa de zonificación nacional. Ahora, con una metodología probada en el campo tras la creación del Mapa de zonificación de Connecticut, se propusieron recopilar, con ayuda del público, datos de zonificación del resto de país mediante los mismos métodos. Hasta ahora, participan equipos autoorganizados de 12 estados. Cuando logren crear el mapa nacional (y el Instituto Lincoln de Políticas de Suelo hará todo lo posible para que esto suceda), comenzará una nueva era para los académicos de políticas de suelo. Los debates sobre los costos, los beneficios y las consecuencias de la reforma de la zonificación tendrán sustento en datos reales.

La reforma de la zonificación por sí sola no es suficiente para resolver la crisis nacional de la vivienda, pero es necesaria. Es importante que contemos con más información sobre las prácticas de zonificación actuales y los posibles beneficios de las prácticas de zonificación mejoradas para abordar los problemas generados durante décadas de malas prácticas. Un siglo de control local, descentralizado y aislado del suelo produjo niveles inaceptables de segregación racial y económica, una expansión urbana descontrolada que contribuyó a la crisis climática y una crisis de vivienda asequible casi inexpugnable. Mediante la alineación sin precedentes de la voluntad política con las herramientas y conocimientos nuevos, las soluciones posibles a esta triple amenaza están más cerca que nunca. 

Crédito de la imagen: Mapa de Zonificación Nacional