I can understand the desire to assure you don't have 15 people living in a three bedroom home or apartment. However, being overly restrictive doesn't allow for creative solutions to some other problems. For example. we have an increasing number of elderly people. Congregate housing arrangements could allow for older people needing assistance from room mates to remain out of facilities, such as hyper expensive nursing homes and assisted living. This would benefit younger people who need housing, and older Americans how could benefit from renter at a lower cost in exchange for household assistance. Common sense needs to rule here. Current zoning laws and regulations should be examined in light of changing demographics and housing costs.
13
Add Airbnb to the mix...there may be all types of law, but here in N.J. there isn’t a state regulation for short term rentals. Towns make them up as they need to. Towns at the shore may have municipal codes regulating short term rentals as well as “Animal House” regulations. Most towns do not have codes. We have an umbrella of state codes that are over 512 municipalities it is in the municipal code where the rubber meets the road. A small cottage less than 900 sq/ft in our bayfront town is now an Airbnb now listing as having sleeping 9. 4 on a porch a bunk bed in a closet. No smoke detectors, co2 detectors, egress windows. The town shrugs and says we haven’t anyway to manage this until we create the municipal code. Putting up a percent sign or a fence requires a property survey a permit survey and on and on and on.
25
@08758 Citizen There is no such thing as a household CO2 detector. There are CO detectors. One will kill you; the other won't. Know the difference.
1
There was a case in Hartford, CT a few years back that pitted a household of people who purchased a run-down mansion in the city, fixed it up and made it into their home. They were living communally, and some neighbors had a problem with that. There was legal action against them, which was eventually dropped. It led to a change in the definition of "family" for zoning purposes. Hartford now defines family as "A collection of individuals occupying the entire dwelling unit, sharing a household budget and expenses, preparing food and eating together regularly, sharing in the work to maintain the premises, and legally sharing in the ownership or possession of the premises."
I find the language about preparing meals together rather humorous. I know blood related families that can't meet this definition because they eat out at restaurants every day.
30
Good luck getting urban homeowners to agree...In the past, integration has lowered property values and caused urban people to move elsewhere. No Democrat would stay in office if he messed with residential real estate values..Urban areas in the north were segregated by local governments and will remain so. That's the way urban voters want it...If urban voters had any true desire to integrate, it would have happened long ago...
Oh Lord spare us another "expert" who sees the whole universe through her little peephole.
"Moreover, there is no evidence that a traditional family and a true functional family differ in land-use effects. The fact that zoning codes allow an unlimited number of related people to live together (while limiting unrelated people) is not rational, either."
a) It's critical to deal with college student rentals packing a house with unrelated and not "functionally" a family;
b) It's critical to deal with sleezy individuals who rent out tiny spaces as ultra cheap short-term rentals with concomitant fire risks and impacts on other residents.
c) A family of 12 is an absurd example. Nonetheless, doesn't the author understand the particular relevance nowadays of not separating true families.
A reasonable solution is an expanded, but formalized definition of "family" that includes custodial or other relationships, not just "shared roof" plus a limit of (e.g.) 5 unrelated individuals.
2
Thanks to Professor Bronin for shining a light on this issue. But strict definitions of "family" (already loosened in many states) are just a small piece of the affordable housing puzzle. Even if states define families functionally, as she sensibly advocates, it will still be hard for people to find affordable homes as long as cities and towns require single-"family" structures on large lots. Not everyone wants a roommate. For single people, elderly, and young folks starting out after college, it can be difficult to find a studio or one-bedroom apt. in many communities due to zoning.
Another huge issue completely unaddressed in this piece is the role that homeowners' associations play in excluding affordable housing. Even if a city or state allow multi-family zoning, as Minneapolis and Oregon have now done, an HOA can still use the law of covenants to ensure that the properties within its development remain single-family only.
2
Do I live in an anomalous subdivision? I have noticed that many of my neighbors, as well as myself, own homes that are adequate for our needs but smaller than we can afford. Some of us are retired, but others are single or coupled and still working. Many homes here have huge self-contained RVs parked beside them, while the homes themselves range from 1100 to 1800 square feet.
Meanwhile, my siblings live a few miles away, kids grown up but in homes of 3600 to 4000 square feet. Really, what couple needs so much room? Clearly, some people of lesser means could live in my neighborhood--and have and maybe still do--but only people of some wealth can live where my siblings live.
I prefer the mixture in my own neighborhood. It's safe, and it is more interesting.
1
Everyone loves the Golden Girls. Kudos to the author for framing the debate around Bea Arthur.
However the real issue is that people who live in a neighborhood of single family homes do so for a reason. Completely changing the nature is the suburbs is neither amusing or endearing, like the Golden Girls.
If the concern is really about transit and density, then make the cities denser, not the suburbs.
1
When I was an undergraduate, a group of 5 or more women not "related" to each other and living in the same house was considered a brothel in New Hampshire. The sorority houses could be closed down under that rule without the protection provided by recognition by the college. It mattered not a bit what was happening inside the walls.
Certainly it made it easier for students who wanted to live in a rented house in town to explain to their parents why those houses had to be co-ed.
3
In the early 1990s I lived in a close in Minneapolis neighborhood. It had originally been a lower income blue collar neighborhood, and had a total mix of single family homes, small apartment buildings, commercial and even light industrial all mixed together. The block we lived on was mostly single family homes. Some of them had been in the same family for 3 generations, some of us totally new.
Our house had been semi-flipped after being owned by the same couple for 40 years. There was a 4-plex across the alley, and a brand new accessible home at the end of the block. The family 2 doors down had a little ‘grandmother’ home in the back yard. There was a frequent bus route ½ a block away that took me to ½ a block from my work downtown, way less walking than from the closest parking. While we lived there a small shopping center went in 2 blocks away. It was a great place to live.
I’ve never liked suburbs - if I’m going to live in a city I want to be in the city. If I want to live in the country I don’t want to be in one of those rows of 5 acre lots. (I am cheating a little now, living in a town of about 100 people, and currently being annoyed by all the guys out with their big riding mowers on city sized lots.)
1
This is why I will be voting for Trump. All the Democrats want to eliminate the States and only have a federal government. Castro wants to eliminate local zoning and have a national standard. Just tear up the Constitution and elect a dictator like Harris who says she is going to govern by Executive Order.
9
@Rich Murphy funny you would say that, when trump is already governing by Executive Order and has declared himself immune to review from the Supreme Court or Congress.
12
Trump is ruling by executive order, flaunting and disregarding the constitution, and rejecting state rights. Here in Minnesota he’s forcing through a large mining project in the Boundary Waters using the power of the federal government. Our state doesn’t want this project as it will damage these pristine waters and continue to appeal through the courts.
9
@Rich Murphy
Since that is what the current administration is doing at present-- the poster can be reassured that Harris might continue the policies they currently support
3
Sorry far left, you cannot regulate equality. You can regulate equal access to things like education or healthcare, but not the outcomes. To imply as done here, that family neighborhoods are racist and lead to segregation is nonsense. It's one's economic standing that leads to where they live, and the expectations they live under from the community. Not race. My neighborhood has gone from 95% white to 50% white in a 35 year span. All live well together, no real issues. Regardless of race or religion, we expect our neighbors to be civil, keep their yards up, and respect each other. Period.
I would never raise kids in the city; cannot think of a city in the US where education is even mediocre. Unions do force schools to keep all comers, whether they can teach or not. But worse, the 'bad' kid in class is coddled at the disrespect of the majority of students. Somehow in the 21st century, that's a good thing. It's not working.
Also, I remind the author who spends her life promoting urban policy, planning, and zoning, that she may like the idea of controlling us through the Federal government, but we citizens do not.
3
The article seems like a bait and switch. While it starts off mentioning housing segregation and low income housing inequality, it quickly shifts to the definition of “families” as contemplated in zoning laws. That is a completely different issue as the non traditional family units, whether it be a group of single moms or elderly singles mentioned, are not necessarily low income or minority. In fact, they may collectively be very well off, and these non-traditional family units could even come to be seen as disruptive or gentrifying to long established minority neighborhoods in urban areas. While doubling or tripling up might be a good way of economically accessing the cultural or educational amenities of an urban center, it may just become in the end another race to the bottom norm where housing prices upward adjust accordingly.
1
We need more family neighborhoods, not fewer. And if 2 people go in and buy a house together, they are legal residents; don't need zoning for golden girls once they all own the house.
It is the neighborhood that creates a safer place to live, not large apartment complexes where people are piled on top of each other. Why do the Dems think they know best for all and need to control every piece of our lives? This is not the party I grew up with.
"The housing plans released by the Democratic presidential candidates Cory Booker, Julián Castro and Elizabeth Warren rightly recognize that only bold federal intervention can fix a problem as entrenched as housing segregation." If Democrats believe it's a good thing for the Federal government to determine how and where we should live, they lose my vote.
2
the feds did this for decades through federal mortgage guarantee rules, until it was both called out and made illegal.
2
The problem comes when a nice residential single family neighborhood starts to show signs of "non-family" and multiple family use: too many vehicles trying to find parking in driveways and the street in front, often maybe four or five vehicles for each single family house; AND the conversion of these, formerly nice, single family homes from OWNER OCCUPIED, to badly maintained buildings owned by corporations or distant landlords. Regardless of the problems of homelessness and lack of affordability, we cannot turn our decent neighborhoods into slums. The wealthy will always have their enclaves, but what about the working middle class?
3
While we are at it, lets do federal zoning for our wildfire prone areas in the western US..
1
My dad had a rental 3 bedroom house that an extended Asian family occupied--maybe 10 people from three generations. They met the criteria as a family and they lived there for many, many years. The neighbors did not complain nor did we have any problems with them.
My nuclear family moved from a 5300 sq ft house to a 2500 sq ft house after my older two children left. I actually liked the intimacy of the smaller house--we felt like our sons were more accountable and closer to us.
People have different priorities and for government restrictions to curtail free choice is a problem. Our consumer driven culture assumes bigger is better but I'm no fan. With 5300 sq ft, we required help. With 2500, not so much. With a bigger house you need to run a cleaning service as a part of managing the household. Ugh!
1
The author conflates two different issues: broadening the definition of family versus zoning against single family housing, regardless of how the family is constituted. There drive to densify every neighborhood within city limits ignores constraints imposed by infrastructure, traffic and transit access, environmental degradation, design, and quality of life. Counting on developers in hot markets to build affordable units is a fool's errand; they build for the well-paid tech workers who work for the companies that drive the economies in these cities. Those not fortunate enough to earn six figure salaries are driven out of cities, and traditionally diverse neighborhoods are displaced by gentrification (see the Mission District in SF and the Central District in Seattle). Mayors and city councils in these cities see their future as sterile office parks populated by transient tech workers who often have little commitment to the local community.
There is a mid ground between big houses on big lots and endless towers of soulless cubicles. Lot size in city boundaries can be reduced, the footprint of new houses can be reduced accordingly, the definition of what constitutes a family can be broadened, regulations for building a single accessory unit on a lot can be loosened, incentives and penalties can be used to encourage developers to build affordable units. This would require creative city planning that brings communities together, not setting them at odds.
2
At this point housing everywhere is so expensive that we're going to see a great many people, employed and unemployed, unable to afford decent housing. Retired people will be homeless as well. But the gentry, like Trump and his HUD secretary will have no problems blaming us for being unable to pay for housing. We weren't born rich.
2
You should watch more TV.
The Golden Girls were found in violation of zoning laws in one episode.
3
there is no reason that zoning cannot/should noot protect areas where, for example, sewage has not replaced septic...many of these areas also have wells, drinking water that would not survive increases in population density that threaten leach fields or promise to add more chemical lawn management poisons to the ground water.
there is also character...protecting, say, rural character has innumerable environmental benefits for vegetation and habitation...
none of this, of course, has to define who the persons are that live in a residence as long as occupancy does not exceed certifiable septic and potable water capabilities of a residential property.
btw in these and in more crowded environments, urban and densely residential especially, more attention should be paid to creating and enforcing building/sanitary codes.
2
As a college student in Boston in the 1970s, when looking to rent an apartment my friends and I discovered Brookline had an "unrelated persons" ordinance. The maximum number of unrelated persons renting an apartment was determined by the number of bedrooms x 2. It was to equally protect landlords and renters. In a student-rich city there was always the possibility of a landlord leasing and cramming 8 college students into a 3-room apartment, and conversely 8 students attempting to reduce their rent costs by leasing a 3-room apartment.
3
I am on our local planning board. While I am a relative newbie, the most important thing that we are doing, and other towns have already done, is expand the footprint of mixed use zones. These are zones where businesses are on the first floor of a development and residences are above. Mixed use zones allow the inclusion of various levels of affordable housing as one piece of the residential component. At least in the suburban North East, I don’t really see how the writers ideas would help much except for the over burdening of local schools and resources.
4
There was an episode in which Blanche is told she's in violation of the Miami zoning laws by having three roommate/tenants and that she must remove one. Her out is to sell the house to all the Golden Girls so that they can continue to live together without violating the law.
But in real life that would not suffice unless they got married and adopted each other legally.
3
I agree fully with Sara Bronin’s goal, but not with the precise way of reaching it. I helped lead a failed effort to put a question on zoning to voters in the city here three years ago. We had limited resources but did what we could to sample the opinions of the electorate prior to writing language.
There is skepticism among a signficant number of people about attempts to dilute the meaning of “family”. This opinion wasn’t limited to people in “traditional families”. The other key opinions we found were that answers to questions about square footage were sensitive to wording, and that when choosing whether housing situations were “acceptable for others” the key considerations were separate rooms and toilets. We couldn’t combine these cleanly and instead settled on the central premise that “bedrooms are for people”.
This gets to the core of Thurgood Marshall’s dissent in Belle Terre, the relationships among residents don’t change the capacity of housing stock. Homes are capable of holding some number of people, those people should not be required to define themselves as a family, nor justify their familihood to the government or others to occupy the home. Rather than trying to fit more and more definitions into “family” piecemeal separating family and home is a way forward which people recognize as reasonable.
4
The occupancy limits in local zoning are there to prevent overcrowding to the point that people are living in rabbit warrens. The answer to the scarcity of affordable housing is not to cram more people into unlivable housing situations. It's to make sure people can afford decent housing by adopting a living wage.
39
@PL You prevent overcrowding by limiting the number of people. Allowing a married couple with two kids to reside in a dwelling unit while prohibiting two single parents each with one kid from living in the same dwelling unit as a single household does not address overcrowding.
24
@PL
Yes, just look what happened with Tishman Speyer when the bought Stuyvesant Town. They subdivided apartments meant for middle class families into crowded dormitories with as many as ten unrelated persons to a unit. The issues raised by this are many including fire safety, noise to name a few.
3
@PL
It doesn't matter how much money people have if the number of dwellings remains the same. You could have a community of 1000 families, each with 1 million+ annual incomes, and just 100 homes with zoning rules precluding building more or greater density. This is basically what the bay area looks like.
Yes, time to get rid of arbitrary and potentially discriminatory zoning restrictions. Why not just have cities/townships set a maximum number of persons allowed per square foot of a residence?
Shouldn't have to be based on "family."
58
@Enuf restrictions on interior density are counterproductive if we are seeking fair housing. The existence of trailer communities demonstrates that people can choose to live in pretty dense spaces (often, even in rural settings). Some people would rather have a very small space than have homelessness be their alternative.
8
I agree with that egalitarian and measurable approach. But is that just the other side of the same coin ? Multi family housing. If a four bedroom house can be apportioned to accommodate four unrelated persons, then the only difference between that and a small four unit apartment development is that the dwellers share a kitchen and perhaps bathrooms too. I think the age idea works. Allow elderly to set up group homes. Then by consequence of their consolidation, their former homes become vacated for others to move in. Younger families or such.
4
Here in Durham, NC, a city where growth is exploding, there is building everywhere, but the roads are not able to keep up with the building, and neither is the drainage. In the name of "expanding housing choices", neighborhoods that used to be zoned for single-family houses on 1/4 acre lots are now allowing townhouses -- which will sell for $400K and up. How does that expand housing choices? How does that help low-income families? Building high-end high-density housing to get around NIMBYism accomplishes nothing. I am unable to get out of my neighborhood between 8 and 9:30 AM, and between 3 and 6:30 PM on weekdays as it is. Further development of the main roads in my area will make it entirely impassable without doing anything to address housing inequality in a gentifying city.
Here they are clear-cutting forests, heedless of drainage and the impact on air quality. The developers can do whatever they want, and the roads become ever-more clogged -- or expanded to create more impermeable surfaces. At a time when the reality of climate change is no longer avoidable, we have to look at more than just changing zoning laws to pack more people into ever-shrinking spaces.
66
@Jill C. yep. Same here in Chapel Hill. IN the 70's and 80's Durham had what the author suggested which is essentially "boarding houses". They destroyed neighborhoods of single family homes and turned the neighborhoods into blights with crime, drugs, prostitution and a raft of other problems. The author forgets the reason these codes are the way they are were they were made to address problems that happened in the past.
34
@Christopher Rose The answer is to find innovative solutions for low-income housing. Half-million dollar townhouses don't solve the problem, and neither does warehousing people.
That said, I don't think anyone in my neighborhood would care if I brought in a roommate. If I brought in ten, I think there might be issues.
13
@Jill C.
In Hayward California many of the new developments straddle the Hayward Fault (or no mans land).
4
Huh. I have no problem with more progressive definitions of what consitutes a family. The fact is, who we consider to be our family is often not defined by blood or marriage or even romantic involvement anyway. Nor should it be. And if that change in the laws would help open up more options for people in terms of housing, that's only a good thing.
On the other hand, I am whole-heartedly opposed to opening up single family dwelling neighborhoods to apartments. That is a change that would have a remarkably destructive impact on quality of life, including for those that already live in apartments near these areas.
Single family neighborhoods (and I'm not referring to suburbs here, but close-in neighborhoods) have characteristics that are absolutely vital for healthy communities. They are quiet, there is a relatively low population density, meaning that solitude or near-solitude is actually a possiblity every now and again, and they are home to trees, gardens, and a surprisingly diverse assortment of wildlife.
Despite the narrative currently being pushed by the more naive members of the left, these neighborhoods are not home to a bunch of privileged elitists. They are, in fact, filled with working class people who are very grateful to be able to live in communities where their families, and souls, have a chance to thrive.
Destroying these neighborhoods just because not everyone can live there is utterly and remarkably foolish.
129
Couldn’t agree more. By the way, living in a quiet single family neighborhood does not necessarily rule out de facto multi family living. My neighborhood is very diverse with a number of East Indian and Pakistani families where there are at least three generations of extended families living in one house. OK fine, it’s your property and 10-11 people in one house is your business. I have mostly decent neighbors except for one thing- cars and traffic. Each adult in the house has a car and they’re parked everywhere. Oh well, urban living.
37
Single family neighborhoods are not very environmentally friendly. Density is what makes public transit work; it's why transit is so much more efficient in Europe. Dense places can also be really lovely. Paris comes to mind. There can be shared green spaces, like parks, instead of private backyards. People need to live somewhere, and unless closer-in neighborhoods are rezoned to allow more development, the poor and working class will be forced to drive in from far-flung suburbs, thus creating more traffic and contributing to global warming. I'm always amazed at how people who consider themselves environmentalist can be NIMBYs. It just doesn't make sense.
85
@Semper Liberi Montani
I agree. We have a multigenerational Indian family living across the street from us in our single family neighborhood full of 2500-3500 sq foot colonials with 2 acre lots. They are wonderful neighbors. They aren't unusually noisy, they don't have cars parked all over the street, nothing that diminishes anyone's quality of life.
I think multigenerational living in general is excellent for families, especially children, working parents, and older people.
@Rachel
Raising children in dense places is simply miserable. As a mother of three young children, I can just open my backdoor in the morning and say "go play outside." I can get stuff done around the house and even relax while giving them minimal supervision. They get to freely run outside to play whenever they want. They don't even ask.
In a dense urban area every minute of outdoor play has to involve "a trip to the park." There is no spontaneity, no lowered supervision, none of the unstructured long days spent meandering about a yard that is so essential for children.
And my husband and I both have family in Europe, and the landscape in many areas is covered in miles and miles of soulless high rises. Yuck. No thank you.
55
How about we just sidestep the definition of family as relevant, and just zone as "residential"; with limits on things you can actually measure like minimum square footage per occupant, minimum bathrooms per occupant etc.
3
Did you realise there is actually a Golden Girls episode about this very issue? Dorothy and Rose ultimately buy in, as to become co-owners of Blanche's home, so they can stay together legally. Great episode! Zoning laws are an incredibly effective method of discrimination but remain one of those unsexy policy issues that is never given proper attention in the public forum. I appreciate this op-ed a lot.
164
Great episode in theory. But buying a share of a house would not shift the zoning prohibition.
6
@Christopher Yup, and this episode was on TV Land just recently.
6
Problem: Towns don't want 12 related people living in a bungalow anymore than they want 12 unrelated people living in a bungalow. They don't want the bungalow at all. By pointing out a flaw in the family definition, the pendulum is just as likely to swing in the other direction.
A homeowner looking at this information is likely to say "By gosh, you're right! We can't let an endless number of blood relatives occupy a single family home. We need to close the loophole in existent law." I imagine the new definition would mean a white heterosexual married couple with two kids and a dog. That's a "family."
I have to wonder though: Who is enforcing these laws? There was a law on the books where I went to college that prohibited more than six unmarried women from living at the same residence. Apparently the town had trouble with brothels sometime in the 19th century. No one ever did anything about it. You had one primary lease holder and as many sub-tenants as you could fit in the house. Sometimes more. One guy used to rent tent space in the backyard.
You'd find these quasi-legal arrangements when I was living in New York too. My favorite story is the friend who was renting a mattress under a kitchen table. Again, no one ever said anything.
You have to figure zoning laws are only enforced when someone has a chip on their shoulder. In which case, policies aimed at desegregation aren't likely to have much effect. People who like segregation are going to be loud and vocal about it.
1
During the Know-Nothing era, when Catholics were leaving public schools and forming parochial schools because of the anti-Catholic bias in public schools, there was a particular hatred of nuns.
The parishes bought houses for the nuns who staffed the Catholic schools, and Protestants who hated nuns passed laws making it difficult/impossible for unrelated women to live in their convents.
2
I somehow thought the ban on groups of unrelated adults, especially unrelated women, was to eliminate brothels.
"Presidential candidates should loosen these restrictive definitions." At best, pretty loosy-goosy wording. What authority does a presidential CANDIDATE have?!
There were these four older black guys who shared a 3 bedroom apartment in N.E. D.C.
The area was rough with drugs being slung in front of the building and up and down the block.
One guy slept on the couch in the living room.
The place was regularly swept and mopped.
On their limited fixed incomes it was all they could afford.
The did get meals at the homeless shelter nearby at times.
They were poor. Getting free clothing at the shelter poor.
It went on for a decade and a half till the main guy died.
Everyone knew that the game was over at that point.
The landlord told me, "What was the harm in keeping those guys out of shelters and off the streets? They are not a bad bunch of guys and there for the grace of God go I. If I had gone to court that would have been my plea.''
26
@Lawrence Agree that there are many instances of people living together for the sake of affordability. That's fine; we all know those that have done this even if it was just out of college. However, what if they hadn't been good tenants/neighbors. What if they trashed the place, brought in hookers and started running a brothel? Sometimes it's only the zoning laws that enable eviction of trouble. Most of the time, most people don't care who is living together if they follow the 'rules' of civility and respect. We do not need government telling us what we can do and where.
@Lawrence
What a "progressive" landlord, indeed! ... and, so, just where did he live? Likely in a nice neighborhood far from these people he wanted so much to help. And, of course, he profited well from this arrangement too, getting far more from multiple tenants in that single apartment than he could have likely gotten from a single family.
Aside from the urbanistic worthiness of the proposal, the political optics are terrible: “Democrats want to change the definition of Family” ... you can already sense the vitriol amd relentlessness of the conspiratorial comments in Fox News.
This seems like fine and sensical idea for good governance but also like a real political looser..... Remember how not so long ago your gay neighbor's marriage was going to destroy your family? A well reasoned argument is not needed to see how folks could get rilled up about this well meaning idea too. Having them "liberals" re-define family just gives conservatives something to deliberately mis-understand and attack. It will just become another song in the conservative rally hymnal. With huge hits like "There must be a war on Christmas" (sung to Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer)", "Gotta Gotta Gotta get, get God back in schools" (sung it to Row Row Your Boat) we could soon add a new favorite "Liberals Want to Ruin the sacred definition of family" (sung to Frosty the Snowman). I should write the lyrics for the song up now because if this goes anywhere it will be sung loud low and off key.
In speaking of segregation in housing the author here posits that zoning codes are "the most powerful force dictating where and how people live". That is that is that people have no preference to live among their own race or ethnicity.
However based on the way people live in the real world it is clear that the most powerful factor in where people decide to live is to live among their own race or ethnicity. In NYC, a city where people from many ethnicities live, virtually each of them has their own neighborhood where they live amongst each other. There are huge tracts where the housing stock is virtually identical where for many blocks it is all asian, then all latino, then all white and then all black. Harlem is divided into Spanish Harlem and the area where blacks live even though the buildings in both parts are identical and the same price.
In fact the group that self segregates strongest are blacks. And this is while whites move into black neighborhoods virtually no blacks move into white neighborhoods. And this is is true from private houses to cheap apartments even when there is no price difference between houses and apartments in the white and black neighborhoods.
And this is because there are huge cultural differences between different races and ethnicities and people clearly prefer to live among those they connect with on a cultural level. The author's belief that blacks want to live among whites if it were only possible has no basis in reality.
It’s called redlining
2
Tough problem, in which every proposed solution forces people to accept neighbors they are opposed to. Perhaps have all who complain about segregation (for example, all who voted for Hillary) open up their home, or buy the home next door, and allow underrepresented minorities to live in them, preferably free of charge. This would greatly decrease segregation and not force those who are opponents of social experiments from having to participate.
1
Sounds like "they" are heading for an authoritarian state.
Seems to be a non-problem and unenforceable regulations anyway. I've lived next door to families where the kids were a huge problem and next door to a couple of single roommates who were nice as could be. People are the problem, not the numbers or their familial relationships or lack thereof.
6
"They could propose thoughtful federal statutes that articulate how local governments can regulate the family."
Once again, the answer must always be a one size fits all rule crafted and enforced from DC, accompanied, no doubt by hundreds or thousands of rules and regulations and another new bureaucracy to regulate it all.
These are local matters, ultimately, and the people can only have effective control over their own lives locally (remember Tip O'Neil's commentary). A neighborhood or small community knows what its own interests are, and can move the needle one way or the other (yes, sometimes the wrong way, perhaps) but it is virtually impossible to have any affect on such proposed national rules. Social engineering is not the role of the federal government, even when it tries to justify it by by stretching and twisting the constitution and laws.
3
A classmate of mine in graduate school was on a local zoning board in a snob-zoned suburban community. One day he said "people are grappling with the problems caused by single family houses on large lots, but they insist that the only answers they will accept involve a single family home on a large lot". This is what sensible proposals - like the fight over whether a gigantic single family home on a large lot can have a separate apartment for grandma or junior - are up against.
5
In my experience, families that aren't one economic unit --- say siblings who inherited a house ---- sometimes don't share financial priorites. Since getting another person to commit to a large expense they don't want to budget for (new roof, for example) is very difficult, maintenance often gets neglected as the more responsible co-owner doesn't want to pay the full cost of a shared benefit.
The other issue is cars and off-street parking.
8
@SAO Wouldn’t requirements for home maintenance handle that specific scenario more effectively than guessing whether sibling owners would do the upkeep for their house?
1
I'm not sure where they are not building apartments but in the Denver metro area it seems that is the majority of what they are building. That said, those apartments will do nothing for low income housing, the rents, for a 1 bedroom, are around 1400$ a month. There are also several houses in our neighborhood, one of the few neighborhoods that has small 2 bedroom, 1 bath houses, that have non-traditional families or families of choice living there and I've never seen people complain about that. I'm not sure that zoning at a national level is going to do anything for lack of affordable housing - the areas with shortages of house have many different underlying causes. If the candidates want to address housing nationally they can start be addressing wage growth or lack there of.
5
I think most towns in this area have traditionally solved the problem neighbor problem with an ordinance, rather than common sense. So rather than deal with the flophouse, informal frathouse, or party house directly as being a nuisance property, the government can point to ordinance ??? restricting the occupants. I can see that, and I can follow the reasoning. That doesn't keep it from being a grenade instead of a flyswatter solution.
I don't see an issue with non-related people living in one household, as long as they're not causing problems in the neighborhood. Three working adults are not likely to be any worse that a couple with some teenage drivers as far as parking/traffic. In either housing situation, if there are loud parties and neighborhood disturbance, there are ordinances aplenty about that. Believe me I've lived next to some families that would have been in trouble all the time for noise etc!
5
There actually was an episode that addressed this very issue. Of course Blanche's solution was to put the house in everyone's names.
2
More residents in a single family house on the average mean more children. Children go to school. Who pays? Does local government drastically increase property taxes?
3
@John Hutnick
More residents in a single family home usually means unrelated young (childless) adults or senior citizens splitting the rent. All of them paying sales taxes when they shop/eat in their neighborhood. So probably a tax plus, but to your larger point - funding schooling to provide our country with well educated and thus well employed citizens is a policy with a great future return. The taxes they pay will fund your social security!
12
@John Hutnick That is the case here. Two couples not married, two sets of 2-4 children plus a set of grandparents in a starter home. All residences pay the increased school taxes...those who don't have a senior to put the home in the senior's name don't get the substantial exemption for seniors...so they sell and move to Florida or NC when they realize how their pockets are being picked.
The problem not mentioned is the water. Many of these locales will need to find more drinking water as the # people / residence increases and they will need an expansion in sewer facilities. That's paid like school tax...
Here we go again. Let's stretch existing law designed to solve real problems into something aimed at, yes, "social justice". Elastic law is the friend of totalitarianism.
Interestingly, it's the activities of a certain religious sect in upstate NY that has presented the greatest challenge to restrictive zoning. So far, the town has basically agreed to disagree and will grant the sect effective control over its own enclave just outside the limits.
6
What is a "family" and why should a family relationship matter when seniors cohabit?
My wife and I have known each other for 63 years (she 13 and me 14 when we met). We've been married for 53 years.
In 1986, my father and my father-in-law died within months of each other. So, my mother invited my mother-in-law to stay with her in our Florida condo during the winter. The arrangement lasted as long as the two of them were both alive. We used to call them "the golden girls".
Is anyone seriously questioning their right to live together during the winter? (They each maintained there own residence in Toronto outside of winter.)
Can the feeble fact that they were distantly related through our marriage somehow have made their living arrangement legal?
Our "golden girls" each had company they knew to live together with in their 80s. Why should anyone object to retirees seeking out friendly, known, company with whom to live?
11
That is the answer. I asked my 80 y.o. Mom yesterday. “Why don’t you share a large house with one or two of your elderly widowed friends. Apart from the housing savings, there is the strong proclivity to save on a shared in home caregiver too. A major expense to consider and necessity to have in place often.
6
@formerpolitician "Their" not "there". Curse autocorrect.
Excellent op-ed, and thanks for writing it. I live in Montgomery County, MD, one of the most affluent and supposedly liberal counties in Maryland. Last week our county council voted unanimously to allow homeowners to construct ADCs (Affordable Dwelling Units) on their properties for renters or family members to use, as rents and property costs in Montgomery County have been skyrocketing for the last decade. My supposedly liberal neighbors who are always bemoaning wealth inequality suddenly became dream hoarders, fighting the council tooth and nail with protests while claiming that single family homes with huge lawns are the "American dream". It never ceases to amaze me when my fellow citizens in the top 10% of the economy become vehement dream hoarders when asked to share.
37
This is exactly the conundrum ( hypocrisy ) of it all. However, might not these lamenters profit from building a unit on their property ?
4
@Suburban Cowboy precisely. An ADC can either serve as a rental unit, which generates income, or serve as a dwelling for an elderly relative, which saves on assisted living facility costs.
4
After reading this comments, I just hope I never turn into a person who is terrified of "renters" or young people. Living in an HOA is my idea of a nightmare. You can have it - I'll take the city with all its messiness and real life.
16
NJ courts have long prohibited zoning restrictions based upon blood or marriage. As long as individuals live as a single housekeeping unit they may reside together. The real problem is that states utilize zoning laws to continue segregation, particularly in the blue states. Laws that require single family homes on large lots and preclude apartments effectively keep minorities out.
7
I live in Chapel Hill, NC. Currently the house across the street from me is a 4 bedroom single family home that used to be occupied by a nice family. They moved and it has since become a rental. I have had 4 transient neighbors in as many years and the new occupants are the overflow from a UNC fraternity. They park up the street with up to 8 vehicles a night. The only recourse I have is the law here that says only 4 unrelated people can live in a single family dwelling. The authors suggestion that we throw all that in the trash and have a giant free for all would wreck my neighborhood. I paid very high dollar to NOT have to live in Student Housing or a neighborhood of renters with all the problems you get with transient non property owners. If the author wants to see what allowing "boarding houses" which is what she recommends by doing away with family definitions, then look no further than old downtown Durham. Where family housing was turned into rented rooms. And all the drug dealing, crime, prostitution, and other problems that caused the city to get rid of it. A single family home is the biggest asset middle class people have. Democrats start messing with that at their own peril.
15
@Christopher Rose - I feel your pain, but how can 4 people have 8 cars? Sounds like they have exceeded the number of people the building is zoned for (related or not) A sensible zoning law would limit the total number of persons, (per square foot or per toilet etc) not their relationship to one another.
3
@MGA My bet is the 4 people are single, they frequently have guests staying overnight. No town should be creating rules to define how many or how long guests can stay. And the neighbor doesn't care if the extra cars are from different guests every night or from partners de facto living there.
1
“Such definitions exclude people just as committed to each other as members of “traditional” families, but who don’t satisfy legal conditions.“
Not true, I believe. A single family dwelling unit classification in zoning parlance never specifies any definition of “family”. Am I missing something here?
6
@RjW , sometimes laws/regulations/codes do specify what counts as family. It may require some looking around, as the definitions may not be all in one place. It may be that they aren't enforced or that they don't exist where you live, but lots of places have zoning laws that wouldn't permit four unrelated adults living as a household in a single family house, even though they would allow a married couple and their two grown children in the same house. My guess is that most of those regulations were meant to prevent situations where four people each rent a bedroom and live separately and restricting those living in a single household may have been unintended.
5
@RjW
'Single-family, owner-occupied' is going to discourage people who don't think they meet the definition from buying or moving in. After all, litigation and moving are expensive. So, even if people didn't care about the rules, the risk of an expensive problem is real.
1
@Doreen
Thanks Doreen. More of an anti boarding house effort. Didn’t think of that. I just thought that enforcing any of these weird rules would almost never happen in practice, if they were even there.
1
I say we apply the principles of antitrust law: local municipalities are monopolies on land use, and they should face legal liability when their anticompetitive behavior harms the poor. Open them up to litigation and damages from the havoc they are wreaking on poor families, the climate, and infrastructure.
Suburban patterns of development are not only wasteful, they are killing us fast through automobile accidents and killing us slowly through obesity and car culture.
4
As described, we are still faced with what condemns this capitalistic system towards injustice, and that is it's deep inequalities; if you were lucky in choosing wealthy parents, opportunities abound; otherwise, good luck in escaping segregation in the basic needs of any well-run society: good jobs and housing, affordable quality health care and education. This is not a new problem, but worsened with the ugly misrule of a most ignorant, and arrogant, vulgar bully in the White House, whose 'racism' seems emboldened recently by a complicit republican party, allowing Trump to multiply his abuse of power, and disengage from the rule of law. In other words, excluding people from the benefits of a traditional family life.
Pardon my ignorance, but I am astonished by such restrictive zoning laws dictating how people can live in their own homes. Are the pseudo-libertarian conservatives on board with this, happy to be told by the government who can and can't live in their houses?
It sounds as if in some cities the traditional student/young adult share house is illegal which is ludicrous and discriminatory.
8
If you want to understand why cities enforce seemingly exclusionary zoning ordinances, you have to understand urban blight, how difficult it is to fight, and how afraid people are of it.
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(Yes, I said urban blight and I meant urban blight. Too often well-meaning housing advocates assume that wealthy and middle class homeowners are racists. That isn’t the case. Urban blight is really the problem, as is the unspoken rule among many D class real estate investors that minorities should accept substandard housing because decent housing is too expensive for them.)
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If you want to avoid blight in the long term, you zone to encourage large single family homes and and plenty of green space with amenities directed at the middle class. You avoid smaller homes and apartments, and make sure there is plenty of office space. Being close to downtown but far from blight also helps.
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If you want to change this, the thing to do is take on urban blight with a vengeance. Don’t fear gentrification, but do avoid displacement with well implemented and timed low income housing tax credits. Pit quality, experienced affordable housing developers against slumlords. Support local Government to make life miserable for slumlords.
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And, might I add, this is a very timely approach for Democrats in light of what Trump said about Elijah Cummings’ District in Baltimore: where the President’s son in law (Jared Kushner) is a notorious slumlord.
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@ZAW
I’ve been waiting for an in-depth expose of “Kushnerville” from this paper. HuffPo says 20,000 people are housed there in deplorable conditions, exactly the type of places Trump said “nobody would want to live”. More publicity of still another example of this family’s racist history is needed. It’s clear that our First Family thinks such housing is “good enough” for black and poor people.
Kushner couldn’t sell his development plans to the Palestinians; wonder why? I imagine population density like that of Kyrias Joel in Orange County NY: poor families who average seven children, many on public assistance.
Strange. They term "familiy" is not used in German zoning law. See the "Federal Land Utilisation Ordinance" (Baunutzungsverordnung).
https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/baunvo/index.html
(Not available in English)
The term "family" doesn´t make any sense in such legal regulations because the purpose of zoning law is to govern construction of buildings and the type of use by typical standards, not the use or the way of social life in the individual case itself. The only relevant term is "wohnen" or "Wohnnutzung". This simply means living permanently in a accomodation as a private person. The social entity that is living in the rooms is not relevant at all in the individual so it doesn´t matter whether it´s a family or not who is living in the house or the flat.
"Family home" might be a target for planning of buildings and flats but this is seen in an abstract way. The building has to be suited for families in a general view by typicity. The practical use by familiy on a case by case base is irrelevant in regard to zoning law.
The specific use might be an issue of building law but not of zoning law. Even then it is depending on the assessment whether this is still typical "living" - permanent AirBnB is not, prostitution in flats also, dual use as office is a problem - or if there is an overcrowding. Then the existence of a family might be relevant; overcrowding by real families is to tolerate in some extent.
4
See what you said at the top “Federal”. Germany is a federal nation. USA is a confederation of states. Big difference in political and legal terms.
2
@Suburban Cowboy
Alright. But with all due respect:
According to your statement "FBI" (Federal Bureau of Investigation) must have an obviously wrong name.
Should it be renamed as "CBI" (Confederate Bureau of Investigation) to correct this mistake?
It is Quixotic to believe that suburban municipalities will revise their zoning laws in ways that might jeopardize the property values of single-family homeowners. You'd have more luck implementing school busing.
And why bother? After laws banning cell-phone use while driving, enforcement of zoning laws are among the least enforced of any statutes. Our township is typical: with virtually no crime, we have a police force of 70 uniformed officers; at the same time, the municipality has exactly 1 zoning officer, and he never leaves his desk. Without a variance, of course, it's impossible to erect a new building that violates zoning law, but once it's built, a house can be used for anything—witness the number of 3-bedroom houses having 14 vehicles parked out front.
5
I beg to argue the other side in a very specific manner. If a community builds 55 and over apartments it can INCREASE its tax base. When the tax base increases, then the amount of tax levied on the existing houses is curtailed. When those taxes are lower, the house price rises inversely. By building the new housing for late middle aged and beyond you avoid the risk of overcrowding in the school district which is where the bulk of the property taxes filter. You maintain a community of all ages as the older folks vacate their existing bigger homes but don’t move out of town or out of state.
5
@Civres. Same thing in our old town....we had to move.
@Suburban Cowboy
"By building new housing for late middle aged and beyond.."
You thereby create a ghetto for older citizens.
As one, I say integration is better.
There's another side to this, not mentioned at all in this piece. Imagine a neighborhood with small single family houses or row row houses, close together on small lots, mostly each with three or four small bedrooms, and mostly none with off-street parking. A very real problem is created when a property owner rents out all the bedrooms in properties like this to a bunch of completely unrelated people, turning the property into a virtual boarding house.
It's typical for jurisdictions to allow two people per bedroom. So, in this scenario, you could have as many as 8 unrelated people living in the house and -- here's where the problem comes -- each with their own car. Now, imagine you have several houses like this in close proximity. The result is no where near enough parking for everyone living on the street.
And, before anyone proclaims no one has a right to a parking space, people should be riding mass transit, etc., I'd say get real. A lot of lower income people rely on having a vehicle to get to/from their jobs, day care providers, the super market, etc. And, without a place to park their car, what was already a life with challenges becomes all the more difficult.
So, before anyone knee-jerk proclaims from their ivory tower that zoning laws are "absurdly restrictive" and "discriminatory," how about you instead provide the actual legally workable wording of a zoning ordinance that would preclude the above scenario but still achieve your goals? I bet you can't do it.
10
To a Montclair citizen , more parking is more important than more housing. I have heard the same refrain on LI. Get out of the seat of the sedan and look at how others live rather than just how to limit the number of steps to the boutique.
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@fact or friction
The problem you present has a simple solution: zoning laws that regulate the number and location of rental units. But that's not what the article is concerned with. Rather, it argues that zoning laws' definition of "family" needs to be updated to accommodate today's "functional families" as well as the traditional 1950's variety. Furthermore it's not clear that the number of vehicles a family owns and parks on the street has anything to do with whether or not the members are related by blood or marriage.
3
@fact or friction What about parking permits for street parking with a limited number per household? That seems to solve the problem.
The reason zoning is important is that with the housing come all sorts of other benefits: parking spaces, street/driving space, school spots, fire and police protection. Unless the additional adults pay additional taxes, crowding in multiple families into a single family unit will reduce the property values for all surrounding owners. It's important for people to have choices about where to live; those choices, however, must include the option to zone your towns and cities as you choose.
12
This may sound like age discrimination but is it ? Part of the housing problem is older folks remain in their larger homes long after it is an empty nest. This occurs in Manhasset NY where real estate taxes are low enough that moving to a less affluent neighborhood into a rental would cost more than staying in a mansion. I would assume California has a similar issue with its low real estate taxes on long residing homeowners ( Prop 13). And in that same town, the NIMBY effect of not wanting multi-family housing exists. So, then, the elderly remain in the large home because there are few choices to downsize in their zip code where they have established themselves over fifty years. There are housing sub-divisions and condominiums where the age requirement is 55 or 62 . Perhaps some community zoning laws for single family houses could incorporate this legal construct ?
5
@Suburban Cowboy
Most of the elderly in my community in Eastern Queens NY remain in their large homes because none of their children can afford to move out and establish their own homes. In many homes there are at least one and often two adult children residing there. In my own situation, one son had to move back in after years of being on his own when his job was eliminated. Another son has never left, moving back in after college. Many of our neighbors have similar situations. We share household duties and meals and they are there in times of health emergencies.
11
@Regina exactly. After I retired I bought a small suburban house. I was single and lived alone. Then I got married, and we built a bigger home for comfort. Then, my sister and her disabled son moved in with my husband and I, so I had to build an even bigger home to accommodate all four of us, to include everyone having their own bathroom (had to go custom build).
Family sizes change all the time and one must accommodate that by updating housing, if they can afford it.
In my subdivision alone with only 44 families , at least five families (to include mine) had adult offspring living with them at one time or the other. Some are permanent such as my household and my neighbors next door where adult disabled males live with family, and others are temporary such as housing divorcing offspring, etc.,
4
I agree with your points too. I referred only to excessive house size for empty nesters who cannot find another smaller home in their same zip code. But in a city borough such as Queens I would advocate more housing development. If you look at how Flushing ( China ) is overflowing into your eastern Queens zones from College Point to Little Neck, we probably see things similarly. When you sell your house, it will probably be to an Asian cash buyer.
3
You make the reason for typical zoning laws sound evil, “These rules have the effect of excluding low-income people, regardless of the intent of the people who wrote the laws”.
Let me say it loud and clear and without shame: I don’t want to live near low income people (LIP). Not because of their race, but because LIP are usually uneducated, have made poor decisions in their lives (like dropping out of school), marry and divorce frequently, have unsupervised kids, don’t take care of their house and yard, and generally lower the standard of living all around them. I don’t want their children influencing my children.
I didn’t sacrifice to earn the money to go to college, learn a business, and work hard starting a business just so I could live next to people who wouldn’t do those things. Hard work, innovation, and sacrifice deserve rewards. Being insulated from people who don’t share the same values that I do, which is their right as Americans, is one of those rewards.
Zoning should be exclusive.
13
Before you get flamed by the other side , I can see exactly what you are saying. I would venture a guess you live on the north shore of Nassau County or Westchester. In the town of North Hempstead there are two areas which are not so strictly zoned and have public transport ( Great Neck Plaza and Port Washington ) near the LIRR. The complexion of those two zones compared to Kings Point, Sands Point ( Gatsby country ), Manhasset, Plandome, Munsey Park, Kensington et al is notably different. I, for one, like the mix of people, restaurants, stores etc. But the small villages and the schools keep a distinct standard to which you refer which is valuable.
3
@Matt Williams. Yours is a very narrow view. Income is not the best indicator of good neighbors. I lived in a small town neighborhood
populated with low income, mostly older homeowners. These people valued their homes and did their best to keep their dwellings clean, repaired, and comfortable. I now live in an apartment complex that includes fixed income folks, lower income folks, and those who probably make a reasonable income. Money is not the issue. If one judges worth by dollar signs, I guess Jeffery Epstein is a model neighbor. Although after hearing of his immense wealth it is probable he would consider you as an undesirable low income neighbor.
3
@Matt Williams I respect your point of view and agree with much of it. The fact is our house is both our home (very personal) and an investment. Its value as a home or investment is very dependent on our neighborhood and neighbors. If our neighborhood is good and stable, we are far more likely to invest and improve our house. Zoning is inherently conservative in seeking to preserve or enhance value, whether personal or financial. Zoning protects continuity against unknown and unpredictable change. Humans, particularly as we get older, fight against change.
Still, change is needed, but in reasonable doses. Single family housing is not forever.
1
Seniors who are living on little money are ill served in this society. If an older homeowner has to take a roommate they find that either they can’t due to zoning or worse, they are shunted into a landlord/tenant relationship which can turn into a nightmare for them if their roommate does not work out. One elderly lady I know ended up financially supporting a roommate for two years until the roommate decided to move on. In CT, two senior homeowners were killed by their “roommates” while trying to evict them. Yes — both zoning and landlord tenant laws need to changed to help those home owning seniors who find themselves living near or below the poverty line in their old age.
7
@Patricia Close by our twin are some large homes with one elderly resident-the last survivor of a large family at one time. I look at one arrangement and find it preposterous that one tiny 75 year old female is the sole residence of a house with perhaps 3500 square feet and a super huge yard. She certainly has her "privacy". I say she is a selfish type but she most likely believes she is entitled to her "space". John Poole
@Erin
So you get to mock her “privacy” and decide she’s selfish because in declining years she desires to live in the home she knows best and feels comfortable in?
1
Plano Tx recently passed a bill wherein it is legal to build a second separate dwelling on a single family residence lot. ( I believe Los Angeles does this in some areas ). There are parameters including size, functionality, etc. Imagine a 1000 sq ft cottage with bedroom, living room, bathroom and kitchen adjacent to a 3000 sq ft home. The stated civic purpose is to accommodate the single and elderly populace who don’t need/ cannot afford the bigger home and don’t want to rent or move out of Plano when downsizing. However, it is possible the HomeOwners Associations may block the implementation case-by-case.
1
As a former town permitting official I always thought the inclusion of a definition of "family" in any zoning laws was absurd and only asking for trouble. There are better tools that are far easier to define to curb the types of issues thought to be curbed by defining a "family."
Also, in one episode the Golden Girls actually were confronted by a zoning official who said they weren't in compliance because of the number of non-related people living in the house. They found a way around the issue--co-owning the house--which wouldn't be an available option for many people in our world of renters.
10
It's a tricky proposition. The codes are meant to prevent single family homes from being boarding houses and group rentals, and limit occupancy.
For instance, the house down the street from my mother is in constant violation of the code, renting to five or six individual students at a time. There is insufficient parking, and sometimes the groups are thoughtful neighbors and sometimes they are not. The home tends to look disheveled and misused.
No neighborhood thrives when a good portion of the homes become places in which transient populations stay in large groups for short times.
But the same code would prevent anyone on the street to set up house with a senior or two and provide better opportunities than large assisted living centers for small groups of seniors pooling resources. It would prevent a home owner in financial straits to share with a few underemployed friends for a long term solution to high living costs and low wages.
Crafting zoning that avoids turning homes into short term boarding houses, but allows for long term sharing is tricky to write. You tend to be able to ban all or none - in between becomes discriminatory. That's why so many localities choose none.
12
Portland is promoting zoning flexibility with the argument that it will lower housing cost, thereby improving affordability and reducing homelessness. An appealing argument but one which serves the interests of the real estate industry, including architects. One might rent a single-family home woirh $400,000 for $2500/month. Ahhh, then an apartment in a 4-plex will rent for $625, far more affordable. Except in Portland that rent will be $1300, or $5200/month for a 4-unit structure. The value of that single-family unit soars, so do real estate taxes. and developers cruise neighborhoods looking for properties they can buy, demolish, and replace with multi-unit rentals. What zoning changes never seem to account for is the speculative nature of the private real estate market.
The real solution here is not to change zoning and then leave the market to allocate costs and benefits, but rather for such rezoned properties to remain in the hands of public entities (perhaps organized as non-profit organizations) to remove the speculative windfalls private interests seek. In Portland developers convinced planners there was no longer a need to include off-street parking in new apartment construction because so many people in urban areas no longer have cars. Planners bought the argument, new apartment construction does not include parking, and streets for blocks around are congested as a result. Multi-unit residential zoning requires close attention to its speculation-based effects.
9
Some simple cures. Make parking permitted with a price. Residents can park on the street if they have the proper permit on their car. That makes a house or building with off-street parking more valuable and one without parking less expensive to lease. Also, all the ills you mention are also cures. If you can build an apartment building with higher rents, then you can assess the property a higher value and levy a higher tax. This improves the financial condition of the city.
4
In SF East Bay "good school" suburbs, zoning rules matter. The forces that propel them are many. Most people, even in these areas, have most assets locked up in the house. Property values are everything. Anything that threatens appreciation threatens standard of living, even threatens the ability to pay the mortgage. This is the real problem...
These suburbs are white and Asian, despite being 10 miles from Oakland, where 200,000 or more middle and upper middle class African-Americans live. It's done by mortgage companies and mortgage bankers. That's a powerful charge, but I know people who work in these institutions. I live in one of these places.
Mortgage specialists meet with school boards (I sit on one). They explain how test scores and property values are linked. Mortgage co.'s offer standard mortgages to ethnic groups correlated with lower scores. Houses average $1 million, and need $250K salary to qualify. The same co.'s offer special mortgages to people whose kids will boost test scores, supposedly. Ten years interest only, etc.. Families only need earn $150K. Efficient discrimination.
No need for fancy laws. Any house that costs $1 million plus escapes Federal discrimination review. End that. Review who's offered special and standard loans. Mortgage guys and big contractors are the most staunch Trump supporters around here. They're afraid of transparency. Use it.
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@Brian
I work in banking. What you're describing it completely illegal. Report it to the authorities.
1
I’m relatively amused by the number of comments here that focus on the ills of overcrowding, considering that this op-ed isn’t about overcrowding.
It is about common zoning definitions for “family”.
If you want to directly address overcrowding, limit how many persons may occupy a house regardless of whether they are a family.
If you want to make me sad, equate the stories I know about zoning laws being used to separate very young adult siblings when their parents die (“no longer single family”) with your worries about too many cars.
7
@Kay McTague
I´m not.
The issue "overcrowding" is the only issue where "family" really makes sense in modern (public) construction law so the commentators went into the right direction.
Your proposal is not viable and not desirable. What about young families having "one child to many" in such buildings after some years? Moving out immediately?
8
@ws Agreed. But I’m currently discriminated against for home ownership due to lacking blood family, and I’m trying to make the point that equating occupancy size to family ties is false and discriminatory.
Setting an occupancy size on a building can also have negative effects, but — and this doesn’t mean it’s good — it’s based on the literal issue that people are decrying.
1
It suffices to define a single-family dwelling in terms of a unit having a single kitchen, no matter how many residents share it. Sharing eating facilities provides a reliable objective basis for describing a functionally integrated social unit. It eliminates the need to arbitrarily prescribe and regulate on the basis of what is or is not an acceptable social dynamic.
8
@woofer
How does your definition hold up in the case of "single-family" houses, such as we have in some of NYC's boroughs, in which thirty to fifty unrelated, usually male, immigrants live, sleeping in shifts in triple-decker bunks, and, obviously, spend as much time as possible outside the house, in the yard or on the street, when weather permits?
Maybe it would be easier to say what is not a family than try to define what it is. For example a family is not “a group of college students cohabiting for short periods”, or is not “a group of people who come and go on an irregular basis”.
But do we even need to define this? The family is an unstable thing, relationships come and go, children grow up, people die, boy/girlfriends move in/out. Cousins and their friends visit for an indefinite period of time.
7
The arguments against inclusionary zoning (zoning that allows duplexes, triplexes, ADUs and other types of compatible multi-family housin) sound remarkably like the arguments that segregationists made against integrated neighborhoods in the 1940's and 1950's.
-- "If they move in, it will change the character of the neighborhood."
-- "If they move in, there goes home values.
-- "I fear for my safety if they move into the neighborhood."
To time warp from 1950 to 2019, just try each sentence with "renters" in place of "they" and then try it again substituting in "blacks."
The sentiments and intent remain the same; only the wording has changed.
22
We live near Belle Terre, the town mentioned in the legal case in this article. There are very strict limits in the area on the number of unrelated individuals who can live together without a special permit but everyone violates the rules and hopes they don’t get caught.
The nearby University has a shortage of on campus housing and no medical student or graduate student wants to live in a seedy and noisy dorm even if it was available. There are no affordable apartments in the area so trying to share a house or condo is the only viable option.
As was pointed out, a family could live together with many more people and many more cars, so why can three students rent a place together? If noise is the concern, enforce the noise violations.
9
European on the line. Absolutely amazed at the issue described here. I thought the USA was supposed to be The Land Of The Free?! As a municipal medical employee, I understand the need to be able to plan infrastructure like water supply and services like schools etc, but somehow we manage this over here without such intrusive and - excuse me - TOTALITARIAN regulations.
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One big difference between Europe and the USA is schools are locally governed by locally elected school boards of a a school district which is the entity which creates its budget and levies taxes to pay for the education. Similarly, many local services are also micro governed by villages, towns and counties. So, the disparate ordinances come to pass.
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Have you actually looked at your country's regulations? You might be shocked at what in there. Here in Germany for instance, there are rules for pretty much anything, from the color of your front porch or type of roof to the number of "domestic fruit trees" you are required to plant in your back yard.
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@Patience Lister
Please don't throw the word 'totalitarian'--in all caps yet--around. I'm sure Norway has plenty of regulations--you certainly have a more robust social contract than we do. You provide education and health care to your citizens without fleecing them, for example. Of course, it does help that your nation has a per capita GDP greater than the US. And, I'm sure your gigantic sovereign wealth funds help quite a bit, but I digress.
As Suburban Cowboy says, infrastructure things get done on a local level in this country, usually via real estate taxes. My town is constantly deciding between fixing the streets and funding our schools. Our sewer system is old, but it's underground so nobody cares until there's a problem. Maybe the fairies come and build/maintain your infrastructure in Norway, but allocating funds to fix decrepit infrastructure and provide local services is a teeth-gnashing exercise in the US.
This particular zoning issue--the definition of family--is a shrug for me. I don't care who is living next door unless there are four people sharing a bedroom or there are twenty cars parked on the street--then I'm going to have a problem with it. But, if the Golden Girls want to move in, I'm fine with that.
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Laws should be made by elected legislators, responsible to the people who elected them and who may choose not to re-elect them, not by judges.
Write your state legislators.
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@Jonathan Katz perhaps eliminating elected judges would result in more consistent application of laws.
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Mr Katz is one of those political types who calls out each ruling from the bench as if it were an activist judge ‘writing’ law. Akin to were he at the baseball game and saying the umpire is making up the rules every time a guy was called out at second or a balk on the mound.
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Single family neighborhoods are designed for single families and should stay that way, people enjoy living in them and pay dearly for the privilege. Four adults living together means four cars and often many problems. Why not develop new neighborhoods in places that are not developed yet, make the zoning friendly to group homes and people who want to live this way can all live together, but don’t think you have the right to come into a town and say, ok I don’t like single family homes so we will abolish them, there is nothing the least bit progressive about that. You want the GOP forever, start taking away town control of zoning and schools. Every town that has single family homes also has multi family dwellings, every town. It is easy to have four adults legally live in two apartments, and have a group home that way.
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A family with 2 teenagers could also have 4 cars. I cannot imagine why anyone would object to four adults living together. Or think that would be worse than a family with four teenage boys (my neighbors).
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Absolutely right. Here in NJ, with very inconvenient public transport within the state, most people drive to work. Our household of two parents & two college students could not function without 4 cars. We park in front of our house & in our 1-car driveway & have not gotten any complaints. Once rented a shore house with friends for a week & had to "pretend" on the rental agreement that we were a large group of siblings. It was ridiculous.
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@DJM It's all about the money, for many people. Zoning isn't about family units, it's about perception. If people who are different and poorer move in, property values may not appreciate. Period. It's what turns progressives into conservatives. As ugly as it is, this is the problem, and we've got to face it squarely. I believe there's ways. Offer homeowners some kind of insurance in home value, in return for changing zoning.
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The following is from The Law Dictionary. Other sites examined seem to state the same:
"What is FAMILY?
A collective body of persons who live in one house and under one head or management...."
https://thelawdictionary.org/family/
While all the definitions have the "traditional" one, they also seem to include just about any group that agrees to live together.
The zoning code legal definitions seems to be very behind the times. However, the system is absurd: local, state etc. Every municipality makes its own definitions. This would seem to be legal anarchy.
Prof. Bronin is correct that family should be re-defined re zoning, but the process would seem to be impossibly complex.
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@Joshua Schwartz When I was a student living in a dormitory, I did not consider the other residents, not even my roommates, as part of my family. Nor did they.
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@Joshua Schwartz
Particularly the "Israel construction law of 1965" could be a role model for an ongoing developement of badly required up-to-date federal zoning laws.
It´s a modern zoning law following recent European thought structures and categories but is not as complicated and cumbersome as many developed European construction and infrastructure laws are at present. It is designed to be expanded step-by-step as it happened several times from 1965 on. So this legal structure might give a right point to start for a astonishing long way to go in US. All at one is impossibly complex indeed.
But in any case zoning law is the wrong place for the "family" term as it is undrestood here. Construction planning law has to use generalising and categorising provisions to regulate usability and type of usage but should never rule personal life and social relationships in each flat.
1
If you shared an apartment off campus you might come to think of them as your family
Single family homes are a great way to not have someone like a Trump.have way too much influence over renters, rental properties and condos, and ultimately local politics.
Preventing the consequences of such an imbalance may be far more important than other factors.
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Increasing density by changing the zoning rules in single-family neighborhoods will NOT open up these neighborhoods to a range of incomes unless the rules have some sort of rent control or requirement for a percentage of new housing to be open to those with low and moderate incomes. Without these regulations, these desirable new living spaces will go to the highest bidder. The neighborhood will be irrevocably changed with no corresponding economic equity.
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@GC - As any true conservative would tell you, the best way to lower prices is to increase supply. That's true in every market for every product. You don't need heavy-handed government regulations. Instead, you need to get rid of regulations so that the free market will increase supply.
In this case, the onerous regulation is single family zoning zoning. The fact that few new homes will be affordable for low-income families does not matter and reflects a lack of understanding of the way markets work. As the number of houses grows, higher-end buyers with more money to spend will demand new, nicer homes. They will put their older, less expensive homes on the market. The impact of additional housing supply is eventually felt by every market segment. So, while the new homes might be expensive, increasing the overall housing supply will still have them impact of lowering upward pressure on housing for people at every price point -- provided that regulations such as restrictive zoning do not warp the market.
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@Ken
There is no room in my town for new housing. If you were to therefore demo my single family house and put up a four unit condo, and then do it to the next house and the next house, eventually, my town would become more and more crowded--like the town adjacent to mine where the cost per square foot to buy anything at all is MORE than in my town.
Supply and demand has limits. Sure, you will buy a condo for less total dollars, but the square foot price will RISE if the area is booming, while your quality of life will definitely take a hit. You are paying less, but you're getting a lot less for your buck.
Your theory works great in Houston where sprawl lets developers build further out. Not so much in places like Seattle or the Boston area.
What GC says is exactly correct. Sorry, economic 'theories' are not immutable like the laws of physics.
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I'm not sure why you're picking on Plano, Texas, where the average rent is $1211/month, down from last year. There is no housing affordability crisis in the Dallas metro area. On the other hand, land use restrictions have resulted in extreme housing prices in liberal bastions such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York City, where NIMBYism is alive and well.
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As a former (thank heavens!) Dallas resident who left the city, husband, pets and life in tow for a more affordable life in a historic midwestern city, I would love to point out to you the dire situation faced by both renters and property owners in the DFW area. The entire region is being gobbled up pell mell by investors and out of state corporations, the result being a housing crisis made worse by unjust inflation of property values and associated taxes. Throw in a population boom, and the quality of life has gone straight into the toilet.
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I lived in Plano for 15 years until recently -- and I'm still in D/FW so I hear this stuff on the local news. NYT is not "picking" on Plano -- local DFW TV stations, newspapers and magazines are saying the same thing. Certain Plano residents are up in arms about a new zoning plan called "Plano Tomorrow" which, in their opinion, turns Plano in to a more urbanized environment. Others support the plan, since a major issue Plano faces is that they're pretty much "boxed in" by other suburban towns on all sides. They're pretty much built up. This has been debated for a few years now, and is still not resolved.
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I live in Plano for 20 years as a transplant from other states (NY, FL, CO) and nations (Mex, Tw). Plano has the easiest housing situation. There are plenty of good, clean, safe apartments in the $800-$1500 range all across the city of 300,000 with also houses in many price ranges $200k-$1M. There are wide open surface roads to all amenities and quick access to four major highways, I live on a golf course, I can walk to a 200 acre nature preserve as can the condo and apartment dwellers close by. Crime is low. Moderate real estate taxes. The employment is very strong. The adjacent town of Frisco Tx has the same story just newer by 15 years.
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I still don't understand why marital status,or the designation of "family" has anything to do with housing. Call me naive,but isn't the most important thing being able to pay for it? Opposition seems to come from the party that boldly proclaims its commitment to "freedom,liberty" and the less government regulations. Next they're going to tell us what we should do in the bedroom. Oh,wait.
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@Randeep Chauhan
"I... don't understand why marital status,or the designation of "family" has anything to do with housing."
The idea was to deter people from running "boarding houses."
Think back to the Depression... You have a large one-family house, maybe you are one older person, or a couple, and you have a number of large bedrooms that you are not using. There are people all over who need a place to stay, but cannot afford a full apartment You could use money yourself. If you put two or three or four or more beds in each bedroom, and rent them out on a nightly, weekly, or monthly basis, you can make enough to stay afloat.
Your neighbors might not be so happy with this arrangement, though, especially if some of your boarders are not the cleanest, or the most honest.
So, the town introduces a rule limiting household residence to family members, and requiring a license, which requires further review, before you can run a hotel.
This problem still exists: There are houses all over Queens that are operated as "hot sheet" hotels for new immigrants, where people sleep in shifts in bunks.
And that's not to mention the scourge of AirB&Bs, which were unimagined when these laws were written, but which they also protect against.
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@Eric This is also what college students do when they sign a one year lease to rent a house but the academic term is 9 months. It has more to do with not being able to afford paying 3 months rent if they're not gunna be living there. I don't consider Air BnB a scourge. I think the problem is lack of affordable housing. I'd rather not think back to the Great Depressiom; it's 2019.
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Mr. Chauhan,
I'm not sure what sort of neighborhood you grew up in, or what sort you live in now, but, typically, single-family neighborhoods are quieter, more predictable, and less prone to crime than denser neighborhoods, simply by virtue of the fact that it is possible to more or less know everyone in the immediate area, whether personally or by reputation. If someone is a troublemaker, everyone knows who s/he is, and if there is someone around who is not from the neighborhood, everyone knows that, too.
Everyone knows everyone else on my road. We may not be friends, but we look out for each other, and we let each other know when something is amiss.
When you change the scale of such a neighborhood, or when, as you suggest, you allow groups of transient residents to occupy houses together, you lose that ability to "self-police" (our town has no police, because we don't need any), and people with no commitment to the area can walk into back yards, take things, get into altercations, and cause all sorts of trouble.
Not everybody wants to live in an urban area, where you have to lock your doors and chain up your barbeque grill, and where your neighbor will key your car's paint if you park it front of his house.
It would be wrong to try to force them to.
7
Great article bringing attention to something that is rarely talked about in detail. The author is absolutely right that these zoning laws need to change.
12
Houston does not have zoning. It's growing, and it's one of the cheapest places to buy a home in the US. Other cities really need to start looking at the Houston model; I think it might be the only city densifying the urban core, with mid-rises replacing single-family homes in the neighborhoods stretching between downtown and the galleria.
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@J lawrence pretty much every city I visit has a blanket of high to mid rise residential buildings between the downtown and suburbs.
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Uh, I like Houston a great deal, but it is one of the ugliest cities in the world, and one of the only major cities where a high school can be situated right across the street from three refineries. (Search for Pasadena (Texas) High School on Google maps, then take a look in satellite view.) There is a happy middle ground between no zoning and restrictive zoning.
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Wasn’t Houston just flooded a few years ago because of the poor planning? Over development. Poor drainage. Few zoning restrictions so a refinery can be built next to a housing development. No wonder it is one of the cheapest places to buy a house. I’ve been there a few times and it is one of the places I would never move to.
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I retired from the planning profession more than 20 years ago. I was always under the assumption that zoning regulations was one of the tools to implement the planning efforts of a jurisdiction. What I have seen lately is a large scale effort to either increase the number of residences allowed on a lot in single family residence zones or increase the number of allowed persons in single family residences. I hope that if any jurisdiction considers these options, they also consider how to provide for increased need for provision of infrastructure (i.e., how do you plan for the increased need for sewer lines, water lines, electric lines, schools, parks, traffic increases, etc.). Without this kind of appropriate planning a jurisdiction's budget could be deeply impacted (which could mean that the jurisdiction's existing citizens might have to foot the bill through increased taxes).
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@Bob
My suggestion, as someone coming from the public budgeting profession, tax these new developments to ensure they, and their residents, contribute to the cost of new infrastructure and expanded public services.
But that's a job for the budget folks, not the planners.
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