This month the White House released a Housing Development Toolkit. The report starts by talking about the local barriers to building and makes this statement:

“The growing severity of undersupplied housing markets is jeopardizing housing affordability for working families, increasing income inequality by reducing less-skilled workers’ access to high-wage labor markets, and stifling GDP growth by driving labor migration away from the most productive regions.”

It then goes on to highlight a number of tools that American cities have adopted or should adopt “to promote healthy responsive, affordable, high-opportunity housing markets.” 

They are:

• Establishing by-right development
  

• Taxing vacant land or donate it to non-profit developers
  

• Streamlining or shortening permitting processes and timelines
  

• Eliminate off-street parking requirements
  

• Allowing accessory dwelling units
  

• Establishing density bonuses
  

• Enacting high-density and multifamily zoning
  

• Employing inclusionary zoning
  

• Establishing development tax or value capture incentives
  

• Using property tax abatements
  

None of this will be news to regulars of this blog. We have spoken about almost every single tool in the above list. 

I’m not necessarily sold on all of them (good discussion to have), but I have gone on ad nauseam about eliminating parking minimums (off-street parking); the value of accessory dwelling units (commonly called laneway housing here in Toronto); and the negative impacts of barriers to building.

The good news is that there’s growing alignment around a similar set of actions. Change takes time. There’s usually a heavy bias towards the status quo.