Zoning Reform Movement

Stuck In The Zone

The Role of Zoning Reform in America’s Housing Crisis

Chris Lester

April 7, 2026

On February 10th, 2025, the city council of Cambridge, Massachusetts voted to adopt zoning petitions which allowed multifamily housing citywide. Prior to the decision, Cambridge had a number of restriction zones that limited the housing that could be built to single-family or two-family developments. At the same time, the city has been suffering from a housing crisis, with almost 50% of its renters struggling to pay their rent, due at least in part to a persistent lack of housing supply. The proposal and passage of these petitions was in direct response to this crisis and the desperate need to construct more housing. After the vote, staff for the city now estimate that the new zoning could result in ten times as many new homes created by 2040. This vote and the process by which it came about illustrates a growing trend of state and local governments looking to zoning reform to address our housing shortage.

The failures of our housing system have become impossible to ignore. In the latest tally taken in January 2024 by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, it was found that more than 770,000 people were counted as homeless. This was an 18.1% increase over the previous year’s tally and the highest recorded since the survey records began.

To make matters worse, while the number of people suffering from homelessness has increased, they have also been faced with increasingly hostile and punitive laws and policies. The recent decision in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, holding that local ordinances which impose civil and criminal penalties for camping on public land do not constitute cruel and unusual punishment when applied to homeless people, has opened the floodgates for the dismantling of homeless encampments and heightened criminalization throughout the country. The availability of support services for these individuals is also due to shrink as the Trump Administration plans staff cuts up to 84% in the HUD office that administers homelessness assistance and grants intended to help communities build affordable housing and recover from disasters. At a time when more people than ever before are experiencing homelessness and the federal government and legal system seem unsympathetic and unwilling to help, solutions to this crisis are essential.

One of the largest contributing factors to modern homelessness is the availability of affordable housing. The U.S. currently has a shortage of 7.1 million rental homes affordable and available to renters with extremely low incomes (incomes at or below either the federal poverty guideline or 30% of their area median income, whichever is greater). Even if we adequately funded and staffed programs to help those experiencing homelessness find housing, there simply would not be enough supply to meet the current demand. We are in desperate need of more housing and people will continue to suffer until this need is met.

To address this shortage, substantial changes and ambitious initiatives are needed. We won’t be able to meet this moment with the same policies and practices that brought us into it. One area that has been looked to as a potential solution is the reform of our zoning system and the limiting or abolishment of the restrictions on housing construction and development that it imposes.

Exclusionary zoning is a staple of American planning and can be seen in almost every city and community. Approximately 75% of land in the U.S. is constrained by zoning practices that exclusively permit single-family residences. Virtually all cities have minimum lot size requirements (rules which specify how large a plot of land must be before housing can be built) as well as minimum parking requirements (rules which mandate that new developments provide a set number of off-street parking spots). These ordinances have been in place for decades and have in many respects become an accepted part of American life. However, in recent years, debates have broken out over the utility and practicality of these laws and practices and the barriers they impose to the development of new housing.

These debates over land use reforms are occurring in municipalities all over the country and demonstrate a complex intersection of public, private, and governmental interests. At a time when solutions to the homelessness and affordable housing crises are desperately needed, an exploration of the zoning reform movement, its various stakeholders within the housing legislation ecosystem, and the specific changes it advocates for can shed light on the obstacles to implementation of meaningful reforms and the steps necessary to chart a path forward.

History of Zoning

While zoning may seem like a fundamental part of American city planning, it was rarely used before the 20th century. Up until about World War I, virtually all of America was unzoned. In this pre-zoning era, cities and towns mainly regulated what could be built through nuisance laws, with private individuals filing suits if a nearby property or its use impaired their rights in some way. As cities grew in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, the need for more comprehensive regulations on the use and types of property that could be built led to the passage of zoning laws. However, the structures that these zoning plans took reflected a more deliberate degree of control than the previous nuisance-based approach. According to M. Nolan Gray, senior director of legislation and research at California YIMBY and author of Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It, “the form that our cities took in the 20th century was not this emergent, spontaneous free market thing. It was heavily, heavily engineered for good and ill.”

Among the first zoning codes passed in the U.S. was the 1916 New York City Building Zone Plan. This plan arose in part due to the efforts of established commercial landlords who feared the rapid increase in the density of new office and residential buildings and its effects on real estate prices. These landlords pushed for height and density restrictions largely to maintain their market position. The plan also separated areas based on their intended purpose, designating districts for residential, commercial, and industrial use. This was partially in response to concerns about the encroachment of industrial properties on commercial shopping districts. Though amended in the years after its passage to respond to new developments and concerns, the plan in its original form became the model for cities nationwide.

Map displaying zoning designations for a variety of areas in New York City

Scan of 1953 Area Zoning Map Section No. 12 by the New York Public Library – Source: https://nypl.getarchive.net/media/area-zoning-map-section-no-12-095fe8

The motivations behind these new zoning laws were varied but tended to reflect larger social and cultural attitudes. Though frequently presented as a means to sanction regulations on property in order to serve the public interest, zoning was often used to facilitate social and economic segregation. With the major population shifts occurring in the country around the turn of the 20th century, early zoning laws were designed to prevent the influx of immigrants and minorities into established communities. Some went so far as to directly prohibit the ability of minority homebuyers or renters to live on certain blocks or within certain areas. Though these types of explicit racial zoning plans were held to violate the Due Process clause of the 14th Amendment in Buchanan v. Warley in 1917, efforts to fashion legally acceptable racial zoning schemes persisted for decades.

By the end of the 1920s, zoning had become the norm for urban planning in the U.S., aided by the development and promotion of the federal government’s Standard State Zoning Enabling Act (SZEA). Created by then-Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, the SZEA established a relatively uniform zoning process for cities by setting forth model legislation that, upon passage by state governments, gave localities the power to enact zoning laws. In addition to making it easier for states and cities to incorporate zoning into their laws, this federal initiative seemed to respond to those scrutinizing the constitutionality of zoning by prescribing a basic, federally-endorsed form of zoning that was likely to survive court challenges. Any further legal doubts about these land use regulations were put to rest in 1926 with the decision in Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Company. In that case, the Supreme Court held that the zoning ordinance at issue was a valid exercise of the local government’s police power and that such regulations would generally be upheld if they had some connection to the public welfare. With the blessing of the Supreme Court and the availability of a federally created model, zoning had found its way to the center of American city planning.

While there have been other trends and developments in the history of American zoning in the decades that followed, such as the Fair Housing Act and its targeting of zoning policies with discriminatory effects, these origins are significant to understanding how we arrived at our current zoning system and the elements that must be considered when attempting to reform it.

Voices in the Zoning Debate

Like any complex issue, there are a variety of stakeholders involved in the debate over zoning reforms, each with their own interests and motivations. While the most visible are the advocates who are seeking these reforms and the governmental bodies who are ultimately deciding whether their proposals should be passed, there are a number of peripheral stakeholders who can influence or obstruct these efforts and their implementation. Among the most important are: current homeowners who fear the changes that would accompany zoning reform, corporate landlords whose role in the rental housing market has grown in recent years, and the federal government whose policies and grant opportunities can heavily influence the actions of state and local governments. To fully understand their positions and the impact they have on reform efforts, it is worth examining each in turn.

Current Homeowners

Some of the fiercest resistance to the elimination of exclusionary zoning laws has come from single-family homeowners in the towns and cities where these reforms are proposed. They often express fears that allowing the development of multifamily housing or implementing other land use reforms will result in “spikes in traffic, strains to infrastructure, displacement of low-income residents, hits on property values and changes to neighborhood character.” Some homeowners are so motivated by these concerns that even when zoning reforms do pass, they bring court challenges to prevent them from being realized.

A recent example of this can be seen in Montana. In 2023, state lawmakers passed a series of bipartisan bills aimed at changing their zoning, land use and building codes to make it easier for property owners to build new housing. These bills proposed requiring Montana cities to permit backyard flats and other accessory dwelling units and to allow duplex homes to be built in places zoned for single family housing, as well as several other housing related measures. After being signed by the Governor, the laws were meant to take effect in January of 2024. However, in December 2023, a group of single-family homeowners from across the state challenged them. This group, known as Montanans Against Irresponsible Densification, or MAID, filed a lawsuit alleging in part that the bill package took away local governments’ ability to zone and thus “attempt[ed] to arrogate to the State powers constitutionally reserved for local governments” and “drastically reduce[d] the ability of the public to participate in governmental decision making.”

In the suit, MAID members claimed that “[a]reas zoned for single-family uses have a long and venerable history in the United States and in Montana cities. Homeowners in Montana have traditionally relied on single-family zoning designations to protect the scale, character, and financial viability of their most important investment.” The fears and underlying societal values that motivated this strong opposition are on full display here. To groups like MAID, single-family homeownership is the norm and should not be forced to give way to multifamily developments, even if it would result in more affordable housing and improved quality of life for the most vulnerable in their communities. Beyond the historical and cultural significance they attribute to single-family homeownership, they also worry about the loss on investment that allowing more housing would represent. If the supply of the housing stock increases, home prices would likely decrease and the value of their “most important investment” may suffer. As a result, resident groups like MAID and the homeowners they represent can view zoning reform initiatives as an attack on their assets that they must oppose to preserve their wealth.

Corporate Landlords

Rental housing ownership has increasingly become an area of investment for large corporate entities. These institutional investors, often referred to as corporate landlords, initially grew their place in the rental market by engaging in bulk purchases of foreclosed properties in local auctions after the 2007-2009 recession. Between 2011 and 2013 alone, private equity firms and hedge funds acquired approximately 350,000 bank-owned single-family homes. In the years since the number of properties owned by institutional investors, especially single-family rental homes, has only grown. While there are difficulties in determining the exact amount of corporate ownership of rental properties, since some individual owners will establish LLCs or other corporate structures to manage their properties, data from the U.S. Census Bureau has demonstrated a significant shift. Their most recent Rental Housing Finance Survey, conducted in 2021, showed that the percentage of rental properties owned by individuals dropped by 8 points between 2015 and 2021, from 78% to 70%, reflecting a decline of more than 3.4 million properties. In this same period, the overall size of the nation’s housing stock decreased by 12% while the number of rental properties owned by LPs, LLPs, and LLCs increased by 4%.

The actions of these corporate landlords reflect different incentives and pressures than individual rental property owners. While traditional economic thinking would suggest that when prices of goods like housing rise, producers who have the means should act on this signal to increase supply, many corporate landlords have not been behaving in this way. Though regulatory barriers to construction and restrictive zoning ordinances have undoubtedly played a role, the impact of scarcity on the profit margins available to these investors and their desire to produce quick profits must also be considered. If a landlord is able to make more renting the single-family home they own than they would renting several units in a multi-family development on the same property, they have an incentive to forgo upzoning even when the law would allow it. This is as true for the individual owner of a single rental home as it is for a national investment firm with properties across the country. However, if upzoning and renting more units in developed properties would result in greater long-term profits, individual or smaller landlords may choose to pursue these improvements even if the cost and time of construction led to short term losses. In contrast, corporate landlords often face pressure to deliver on promises to investors, usually large returns on investments in short periods of time. Guided by this short-term profit-maximizing imperative, corporate landlords may resist upzoning their rental properties and hinder zoning reformer’s goal to grow the housing stock.

Beyond their own properties, an increase in housing supply generally could lead to a reduction or stagnation of market rents that may further cut into their profits. Fear of these potential losses because of reform efforts could motivate corporate landlords to coordinate with one another and collectively refuse to upzone their existing properties to maintain their rental profits The recent antitrust lawsuit brought against data and software firm RealPage and landlord users of its pricing software demonstrates the alleged willingness of major landlords like Greystar, the largest corporate landlord in the country, to engage in these kinds of coordinated actions to decrease competition and maximize profits. This suit claimed that owners and operators of large residential multifamily complexes used RealPage’s software to keep rental prices above market rate by sharing non-public, commercially sensitive information that RealPage used to make “boosted” recommendations for rental prices. Though it is unclear if an intentional and shared effort to resist upzoning of rental properties owned by corporate landlords is likely to occur or would lead to similar legal action, the potential for conspiracy among these large actors in the rental housing market should be considered.

While these corporate landlords may not directly challenge or oppose zoning reforms in the same ways as current homeowners, their growing role in the housing market, incentives to deliver quick returns on investment, and potential to coordinate with other corporate entities to resist intended increases in housing construction could frustrate efforts to implement reforms after they are passed.

Federal Government

Those in the federal government, especially within the executive branch, seem to have conflicting positions when it comes to zoning reform. On one hand, the Trump Administration has said that the high cost of housing is “due in part to regulatory requirements” and has directed all agencies to pursue actions to “lower the cost of housing and expand housing supply.” This position seems to reflect their more general opposition to regulatory regimes and may represent a willingness to rethink the role of restrictive zoning laws and the obstacles to housing construction that they create.

On the other hand, there seems to be resistance to changes that will affect the “traditional” character of American neighborhoods, particularly when it comes to single-family home ownership. In Project 2025’s Mandate For Leadership: The Conservative Promise, it is said that “Congress should prioritize any and all legislative support for the single-family home” and that “a conservative administration should oppose any efforts to weaken single-family zoning.” Seemingly towards this end, the Trump administration has announced major cuts at HUD which include more than 40% of the total headcount that were reported to be primarily focused on personnel engaged in financing for multifamily housing.

Previous administrations and federal legislators have attempted to tackle the housing crisis through the elimination of exclusionary zoning laws, mainly through the conditioning of federal grants. During the Biden administration, a $10 billion state and local grant program to support zoning reforms was proposed that would have targeted jurisdictions adopting progressive housing policies, including those that encouraged accessory dwelling unit and multi-family housing construction. In 2021, a bipartisan pairing of senators proposed the YIMBY Act which would have required municipalities receiving Community Development Block Grants to explain why they were not adopting a list of specific housing policies which included eliminating or reducing exclusionary zoning laws. The bill passed in its House committee in May of last year but has yet to be brought for a full House vote with no indication that one should be expected anytime soon.

Despite these prior efforts, the federal government does not currently seem to have a coherent or consistent position on zoning laws and the need for reform, leaving much of the discretion to dictate the future of this area in the hands of state and local governments.

Zoning ordinances can be complicated and highly tailored to the communities they affect. Though there are likely many land use restrictions that currently impede housing construction and development in cities and towns throughout the country, there are several that most areas share. These common exclusionary zoning laws are often the main targets in reform efforts. When asked about the specific proposals advocates should focus on, M. Nolan Gray named four “substantive” policies: abolishing single-family zoning, eliminating minimum parking requirements, reducing or eliminating minimum lot sizes, and allowing for mid-rise multi-family housing in commercial areas (especially around transit). Nearly all land in America is affected by at least one of these restrictions and this commonality means that reform advocates can take lessons and data from other areas when pursuing similar proposals. While there are other generally applicable reforms that could be mentioned, such as allowing for the construction of accessory dwelling units on existing properties, the central message seems to be that advocates can be most effective by focusing on changing common zoning policies that hinder housing construction in similar ways across the country.

The way in which these reforms are pursued may also have an influence on their efficacy and durability. As previous examples have demonstrated, zoning changes can be sought through state or local governments. When passed by state legislatures, reforms can quickly bring about change for large areas and bypass local political resistance that could delay, or even defeat, similar local proposals. However, their broadly applicable mandates may not be the best format for every community and their control over what is often considered local law can open the door to legal challenges, as seen in Montana, and claims that the state is usurping local autonomy.

In contrast, pursuing reforms in local government forums, like the recent Cambridge multi-family proposal, can be an effective way to ensure that any new zoning laws are specifically tailored to the communities they will affect. However, this kind of piece-meal approach lends itself to frequent debate and delay as local communities deliberate specific details and respond to community concerns. Slow, measured actions like this may make for good, well-reasoned policy but can often be inappropriate when dealing with a crisis that requires a more immediate response.

Reform at Work: Minneapolis

To legitimate and justify their proposals, zoning reform advocates will often point to areas where their actions have led to increases in housing construction and a resistance to the national trend of rising rent prices. While several cities demonstrate this, the most salient example can be seen in Minneapolis. Touted as the “blueprint for housing affordability”, Minneapolis has become a model for the potential power of land use reforms. In 2009, the city enacted “a series of policy changes that reduced and then eliminated minimum parking requirements, allowed construction of accessory dwelling units and lowered minimum lot size requirements in residential zones.” These have been followed in recent years by efforts to eliminate minimum parking requirements for new developments, encourage apartment development on commercial corridors, establish building height minimums in high density zones, and permit duplex and triplex construction on all residential lots. The results of these efforts speak for themselves: between 2017 to 2022, Minneapolis saw its housing stock increase by 12% while rents in the city grew by just 1%. In comparison, the rest of Minnesota during the same period saw their housing stock grow by only 4% while their rents increased by 14%.

The Future of Zoning

With evidence that zoning reforms can be effective tools to address the housing shortage and established methods for pursuing and passing their proposals, the zoning reform movement seems poised to grow in the coming years as Americans increasingly view housing affordability as a significant problem. What has previously been considered a largely invisible area of public policy will likely become a central focus point in the debate over affordable housing as more people learn that these nearly-century-old laws are preventing us from building desperately needed housing. Like any reform effort, there will be resistance by those who benefit from the existing system and unforeseen obstacles in implementation, making it important to understand the stakeholders that the movement will encounter and their perspectives. Despite these challenges, advocates seem well positioned to at the very least open up the conversation about zoning.

As both the homelessness and housing affordability crises grow in severity, the need to take decisive steps to increase the supply of housing has become undeniable. Despite their long history in the United States, many zoning laws currently present a barrier to housing construction and affordability that largely outweigh their utility. Eliminating these kinds of restrictive zoning ordinances will not automatically lead to more housing construction or reductions in rent but will at least create an environment where efforts to build more housing are not doomed before they begin. In the words of M. Nolan Gray, “zoning reform is a necessary but not sufficient solution for ending the [housing] crisis.” If we truly wish to make affordable and accessible housing a reality in this country, this necessary step must be taken.