Alan Ehrenhalt recently published a balanced piece in Governing that largely reflects my own views on inclusionary zoning. It’s called: Why Affordable Housing Is So Hard To Build.
His argument is that there are lots of cities trying to build more affordable housing, but that most strategies have not yet proven to be all that successful.
I’ve written a few posts on inclusionary zoning. The most recent is this one. And though I believe that a mix of incomes is a critical component of good city building, I am having a hard time believing that inclusionary zoning is the silver bullet that will get us there. Admittedly, it sounds like a great idea. But how does that translate into reality?
Here’s a snippet from Alan’s article (shout out to Daniel Hertz of City Observatory who seems to get cited in almost every article I read these days):
Just about every city that has tried an inclusionary zoning law in recent years has had a similar experience. In some cases, the results have been much worse. According to BAE, Chicago’s inclusion law produced $19 million in 11 years, but only 760 affordable units. Thirteen years of inclusionary zoning in Seattle brought the city $31.6 million in fees and a grand total of 56 units. As the urbanist Daniel Hertz wrote recently, inclusionary zoning has been “more powerful as a symbol than as a way of helping people.”