New Article: Jessica Trounstine, Reforming Zoning in a Racist Market Still Worth It, ShelterForce, (March 2, 2023). Excerpt below:
Land use regulation—the seemingly mundane world of floor area ratios, height limits, front yard setbacks, and, especially, zoning—has been thrust into everyday political debates about the future of our communities. Often, the conversation is focused on making housing more affordable, but sometimes the racist history of those regulations is invoked, and rightly so!
When Minneapolis, for example, ended exclusive single-family zoning in 2018, permitting duplexes and triplexes to be built on most parcels in the city, the mayor and city council asserted that the revision was intended to begin to address the history of racist intent embedded in land use regulation.
But not everyone is convinced that changing land use regulation would be a significant step toward closing the racial wealth gap. David Imbroscio lays out an alternative view in a 2022 Shelterforce opinion piece in which he asserts that it is racist values themselves, particularly in the housing market, that produce racial wealth inequality, rather than the specific policies that those values inspired.
Poverty Law 