Yonah FreemarkJan 9, 2023
In new Urban Institute report, we examine 8 of the US cities that have built the least housing since 2000. They:
—Have very restrictive zoning
—Receive a large share of revenues from state & fed sources https://www.urban.org/research/publication/tracing-the-money
Tracing the Money

In this paper, we conduct case studies of eight municipalities that exhibit particularly exclusionary tendencies.

Urban Institute
Show threadYonah FreemarkJan 9, 2023
We selected cities nationwide that had the lowest increase in additional housing since 2000—but also had a growing regional housing market & strong local demand for housing, as evidenced by local real-estate prices, using this data: https://www.urban.org/research/publication/homing-in
Homing In

Using data from 2000 to 2020, I find that municipalities with lower home values and residents with lower incomes, less educational attainment, and more moderate ideological views had less housing growth.

Urban Institute
Show threadYonah Freemark

The rich, exclusionary cities we selected for this analysis were in CA, FL, MI, NY, OH & TX.

When we compared their zoning rules with those of nearby cities, we found that they are *much* more restrictive. They reserve 75%+ of their residential land for single-family homes only.

Jan 9, 2023 at 2:35pmWeb
Show threadYonah FreemarkJan 9, 2023
Among our case-study cities, we found that several of them receive a large share of their budgetary funding from states & feds through intergovernmental support. This is not true for all cities however; University Park, TX, a suburb of Dallas, receives virtually none.
Show threadYonah FreemarkJan 9, 2023

These data illustrate that one way to encourage better land-use policies among the most exclusionary municipalities may be to leverage state & federal funds. Their use could be conditioned on policies that allow housing production.

Read the report here:
https://www.urban.org/research/publication/tracing-the-money

Tracing the Money

In this paper, we conduct case studies of eight municipalities that exhibit particularly exclusionary tendencies.

Urban Institute