Different approaches to planning, zoning and land use policies enacted by state, local and regional governments have different influences on housing production. Over the past few decades, laws, ordinances, and planning documents have been rewritten to encourage more housing production. Experts from across the nation discussed these changes and their impact on housing affordability in a panel hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. 

The panel featured Jeff Levine of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mary Kyle McCurdy of 1000 Friends of Oregon, Katherine Payne of the Fair Share Housing Center and Jenny Schuetz of the Brookings Institution. They discussed methods that have been successful, as well as policies that have not been effective at increasing housing production.

One example of an unsuccessful policy approach comes from California. 

“The reporting requirements are enormously onerous, this is a boondoggle for land use consultants in California who get to write these plans every 8 years, and it’s not actually resulting in building more housing,” said Schuetz.

In Oregon, housing advocates aim to make it at least as easy to build multifamily housing as it is to get approved to build single-family housing. There has been some success in Portland, which has adopted its own density bonus policies along with middle housing reform. 

The panelists also emphasized the power and importance of coalition building, as well as the bipartisan nature of both supporters and opposition to zoning and land use reform.

However, there is not a single or uniform solution to the housing crisis in the United States. “Land use planning can’t deliver the production of affordable housing by itself, but it has to set the table for it to happen,” McCurdy said.