The White House is calling for cities to update their archaic zoning rules to increase the development of affordable housing.
The move comes in a newly released Housing Development Toolkit.
“The accumulation of state and local barriers to housing development—including zoning, other land-use regulations, and unnecessarily lengthy development approval processes—has reduced the ability of many housing markets to respond to growing demand,” says the toolkit. “The increasing severity of undersupplied housing markets is jeopardizing housing affordability for working families, exacerbating income inequality by reducing workers’ access to higher-wage labor markets, and stifling GDP growth by driving labor migration away from the most productive regions.”
The toolkit highlights 10 actions taken by states and local jurisdictions to promote healthy, responsive, high-opportunity housing markets. They include streamlining permit processes, employing inclusionary zoning requirements, and eliminating parking requirements.
