When the Federal Government Takes on Local Zoning

With housing affordability reaching crisis levels in America’s deep blue coastal cities, zoning reform is having a moment. YIMBYs in high-cost coastal cities like Los Angeles, Seattle, and San Francisco are calling for the construction of multi-family housing in the vast tracts of those cities zoned for single-family homes. What many may not realize is that there’s a rich bipartisan tradition behind these contemporary efforts.

Back in the summer of 1991, the Advisory Commission on Regulatory Barriers to Affordable Housing under George H. W. Bush, headed by then-Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Jack Kemp, decided to take on local exclusionary zoning—land-use regulations that primarily serve to prevent the construction of affordable housing.