What if zoning decisions were not made in your backyard? Would more housing follow?
Central to the American dream is the promise of finding a home of one’s own. National grumpiness, therefore, is more understandable when homes are harder to come by. Blame lies with Americans themselves.
On three-quarters of residential land in U.S. cities, it is illegal to build any structure besides detached single-family homes, the vast majority of which are already built and occupied. Multifamily housing is automatically permitted on just 12 percent of residential land. And where they are allowed, buildings are typically subject to myriad requirements on their height, size, density, floor-to-lot ratio, and number of parking spaces.
Zoning codes were introduced by progressives in the early 20th century as a means of molding the character of neighborhoods. Today, existing residents — especially homeowners — use restrictive zoning laws to keep newcomers out. The “protection” of spacious communities has paralyzed the mobility that once made America hum.
James Madison would not be surprised. When considering the necessary conditions of a lasting republic, he identified “factions” as their greatest enemy from within. A faction, he wrote in Federalist No. 10, is “a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” Onerous zoning rules are adverse to citizens’ rights to control their own property and to society’s interest in accessible dwellings.
On matters of housing, homeowners are unified by a material interest: They want supply to stay tight, so home prices go up. They also wish to avoid the disruptions to daily life that come with construction and new faces, and many simply don’t like the look of homes suitable for young families. These interests and passions combine into a potent opposition to home-building. Who cares where other people live? Just not here.
Conventional wisdom in 1787 held that republics were safest in compact, intimate societies. Madison, after much study, flipped this doctrine. Small republics were most susceptible to democratic tyranny, in fact, as it is there that factions can easily constitute majorities, leaving disfavored minorities politically defenseless. This is the basic problem of local housing restrictions. Established residents are inherently majorities in their respective jurisdictions. No city councilman represents voters who couldn’t afford to move to town.
Nationwide, however, only a slim majority of adults — 53 percent — live in homes that they own. The remaining 47 percent would benefit from cheaper houses and lower rents that would flow from eased zoning laws. Even most homeowners support more construction when details are abstracted away.
The answer, as it was for Madison, is to “enlarge the sphere” of policymaking beyond individual localities. A “rage” for profitable abuses, he believed, “is more likely to taint a particular county or district, than an entire State.” To successfully frustrate new construction in your backyard, the relevant political decisions must be made in your backyard. But what if they were made elsewhere, by the whole of society rather than by a concentrated faction?
In Japan, housing of all sorts is built with little fuss because there are no local levers to block it. When zoning, city governments may choose from among 13 unalterable categories. All but one zone (the most industrial) require cities to permit any kind of low-rise housing, including apartments and townhomes. Denser multifamily housing must be allowed everywhere that commercial buildings are. If a development meets national standards, officials must issue a permit without public hearings or lengthy reviews.
Journalist Binyamin Appelbaum wrote in 2023 that Japan has thus “shifted decision-making to the representatives of the entire population, allowing a better balance between the interests of current residents and of everyone who might live in that place.” It works to reduce costs: Rents in Tokyo are a fraction of those in major American and European cities.
Many U.S. states, red and blue, are catching on by retracting some of the zoning power they have delegated. Texas required cities to approve multifamily housing in commercial zones. Oregon and Washington legalized duplexes and other “middle housing” on parcels previously reserved for single-family homes. Others have taken a hammer to minimum lot-size and parking mandates.
On display here is the Madisonian imperative to restrain compact majorities, which stands in tension with the localism that conservatives often defend. They should remember, as the first Republicans understood, that curtailments of liberty are not any better when perpetrated by neighbors. Or by those who really don’t want you to be their neighbor.