The Department of Housing and Urban Development released a new publication that summarizes the effects of restrictive land use policies on housing supply, location and affordability and highlights reforms that state and local governments can adopt to increase the housing supply. The report urges adoption of the following policies:
- Increase multifamily zoning;
- Allow missing middle and larger multifamily development by-right;
- Enable adaptive reuse and conversions;
- Eliminate parking requirements;
- Reduce minimum lot sizes;
- Support equitable transit-oriented development; and
- Streamline permitting processes and timeline.
HUD also announced an award of $350,000 to Cornell University’s National Zoning Atlas through the Office of Policy Development &Research’s (PD&R) Research Partnerships program. This grant aims to close data gaps that limit our understanding of the relationship between zoning and segregation, affordability and other outcomes of interest. Specifically, these research funds will enable researchers to study the impacts of zoning in the largest cities in the U.S. by contributing to the first-ever comprehensive geospatial repository of zoning conditions.
