In 2017, the city of Louisville, Kentucky, analyzed the average life expectancy of its residents. Those in the more affluent, predominantly white neighborhoods in the eastern section of the city lived longest, the city found, with an average life expectancy of 79 to 83 years. In West Louisville—a historically disinvested area with a predominantly Black population—the average life expectancy was a full decade shorter. The stark difference, the city concluded, was “in part due to systemic oppression.” That systemic oppression includes a long history of discriminatory land use policies. 

Throughout the 20th century, governments across the United States promoted segregation and inequity through planning and zoning policies including deed restrictions, redlining, and urban renewal. Like many other cities, Louisville is now confronting its legacy of unjust policies, including a racially restrictive zoning ordinance overturned by the U.S. Supreme court in 1917. Planners in this southeastern U.S. city created an interactive online exhibit that documents that history and have undertaken a comprehensive, community-based equity review of the city’s Land Development Code.

“Discrimination might not always be blatant, but it is still embedded throughout policy—not just in Louisville, but in many cities,” said Louisville Planning Director Emily Liu. “Just acknowledging that this history exists is very important. It’s not created by our current government structure, but we still must deal with this historical racial injustice.” Louisville announced the review of its Land Development Code in July 2020, and Liu’s department has now recommended a set of zoning reforms that will begin to dismantle unfair policies and help create a more equitable, affordable city.

The city, which is home to more than 600,000 people, has been building a foundation for this kind of policy change over the last few years. An updated Comprehensive Plan released in 2018 and a Housing Needs Assessment released in 2019 both focus on removing barriers to affordable housing and investing in communities affected by discriminatory policies. In early 2020, Develop Louisville—an interagency effort focused on planning, community development, and sustainability—commissioned an analysis of local housing regulations that create barriers to equitable and inclusive development. The events of 2020, including the high-profile shooting of Black medical worker Breonna Taylor by Louisville police and the economic uncertainties sparked by the pandemic, brought new urgency to the work. 

“I believe this may be the first time in Louisville’s history that the concepts of equity and planning have been explored with an explicit intention to change or amend the code to achieve meaningful outcomes,” said Jeana Dunlap, an urbanist, strategic advisor, and 15-year veteran of community development in local government. “Local practitioners and policy makers have been chipping away for years, in many ways, to place underutilized properties into productive use and to advance housing choices and alternatives for everyone in the Metro area . . . [but] the concurrent crises related to the pandemic, evictions, and police brutality are informing the current response. Recognizing the need for continuous improvement in a racially charged climate and doing so in a post-COVID-19 environment is imperative to achieving better quality of life and place for everyone in Louisville.”

Dunlap, who grew up in Louisville, facilitated several community listening sessions held by the city’s Planning & Design Department last year. “A lot of people, when they hear about planning and zoning, it automatically puts them to sleep,” she noted wryly at one session. “But some of us may not fully appreciate just how much the Land Development Code, the regulations and how they’re enforced . . . impacts our daily lives.”

The online listening sessions were followed by online workshops on housing, environmental justice, and education. Planning & Design also created a phone and email hotline for those who were unable to participate virtually and doubled the public comment from four to eight weeks. Liu said the department has received a range of input, from residents who want the city to make more changes and do it faster, to those who are wary about the impact of specific changes such as allowing more accessory dwelling units.

The three phases of recommended zoning changes under consideration represent a holistic approach to rezoning that considers aspects of life beyond housing. Liu hopes the recommendations will be approved by the Louisville Metro Planning Commission this spring, at which point they will be taken up by Metro Council, a combined city-county governing body.

The first phase of recommendations includes removing barriers to constructing accessory dwelling units or duplexes to increase housing options and affordability. It would also reduce obstacles to creating small urban farms, community gardens, and similar enterprises to make use of vacant land and increase access to healthy food and open space, and would require that notices about potential development be mailed to nearby renters as well as property owners, to better inform communities of pending changes. These initial recommendations reflect policies that have begun to catch hold in other cities; for example, Portland, Oregon, now allows accessory dwelling units by right and Minneapolis has done away with single-family zoning entirely. 

The second phase, which would be executed in the next 12 to 18 months, includes allowing more multiplexes and tiny homes. It would also require a review of covenants and deed restrictions associated with new subdivisions to ensure they are equitable. The second and third phases also include environmental justice actions such as mitigating pollution in residential areas near highways and requiring environmental impact reviews for certain underserved areas. “We’re trying to correct and mitigate as much as possible,” Liu said. 

“We increasingly are seeing cities grapple with the racist history of their zoning,” said Jessie Grogan, associate director of Reduced Poverty and Spatial Inequality at the Lincoln Institute. “Louisville is providing a model for other cities by taking the time to talk about it directly, and to say, ‘Our previous zoning—sometimes explicitly and sometimes implicitly—had racist designs. We need to think about how specifically to correct that.’”

Yonah Freemark and Gabriella Velasco of the Urban Institute, who wrote about the organization’s experience advising Louisville on its rezoning effort, agree that the city is at the forefront of this work: “This thorough review of rulemaking and the public process that accompanies it provides a model for other cities looking for ways to reform their land-use regulations.”

While the comprehensive review and the proposed reforms resulting from it represent a significant step, Liu knows that creating a more equitable city will likely be an ongoing process. “I’d say it’s a lifetime commitment for any planner,” she said. “We have a lot of young planners here who are committed to making changes, so . . . I’m very hopeful for the future that our generation and the next generation of planners will continue to make sure that everything we build or create is for all.”

Liz Farmer is a fiscal policy expert and journalist whose areas of expertise include budgets, fiscal distress, and tax policy. She is currently a research fellow at the Rockefeller Institute’s Future of Labor Research Center. 

Photograph: Waterfront Park in downtown Louisville. Credit: Bill Griffin, U.S. Department of Interior via Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0.

Related Content

Rezoning History: Influential Minneapolis Policy Shift Links Affordability, Equity

Lima es una ciudad extensa y de baja densidad, con barrios que a veces parecen extenderse infinitamente sobre sus cerros de arena. Diversa, compleja y ampliamente informal, Lima experimentó durante el siglo pasado masivas olas de migración interna: mientras que entre 1940 y 1993 la población del Perú se triplicó, la de Lima se multiplicó por diez. Su rostro actual es, en gran medida, producto de qué tanto pudo —o no— adaptarse a esta nueva realidad. 
 
En el primer capítulo de Estación Ciudad, “El desborde de Lima”, discutimos cómo y por qué esta ciudad creció sin brindar alternativas de vivienda accesible para su población más pobre. Visitamos la comunidad de Alto Perú, un barrio de pescadores en el litoral de la ciudad, y a la familia Laynes, residentes del sector desde hace más de quince años. Desde ahí, podemos entender los factores que han llevado a tantas personas a instalarse y permanecer en el suelo no habilitado de la capital peruana, y por qué la ciudad no planificó pensando en ellas. 

De acuerdo con Marcela Román, economista costarricense y experta en urbanismo, muchísimas ciudades de América Latina buscaron “excluir los usos que no queríamos en las ciudades. Y unos usos que seguimos sin querer son los usos para pobres, porque en los planes reguladores no estamos obligando a los municipios a que incluyan suelo para pobres”. 
 
Además de esta opinión especializada y del testimonio de la familia Laynes, para desenredar la madeja de la informalidad de la vivienda en Lima entrevistamos a Martim Smolka, director del Programa para América Latina y el Caribe del Instituto Lincoln de Políticas de Suelo, y a un equipo de periodistas del diario peruano El Comercio. El capítulo explora las consecuencias de no planificar la habilitación de suelo para vivienda; los costos escondidos que tiene la vivienda social cuando no contempla las necesidades de sus habitantes; las mafias que lucran con el suelo y los servicios que da el Estado una vez que se habilita el suelo ocupado; y las alternativas que pueden contrarrestar la segregación urbana, como la zonificación inclusiva.

Puede escuchar “El desborde de Lima” y los demás capítulos de Estación Ciudad en Spotify, Castbox, Stitcher, Apple Podcasts o donde sea que escuche sus podcasts. Además, ya que queremos llegar a la mayor cantidad de personas posible, puede descargar el guión de este y los capítulos siguientes en la página web www.estacionciudad.org y compartirlo con quienes tengan alguna dificultad auditiva.

Jimena Ledgard es narradora, directora creativa y guionista para el podcast Estación Ciudad. 

Sofía García es productora general, directora de contenidos urbanos y guionista para el podcast Estación Ciudad.

Fotografía: Juana Laynes sonríe en su cuarto durante la grabación de este capítulo. Crédito: Jerry Ccanto

Early on in Through the Roof: What Communities Can Do About the High Cost of Rental Housing in America, the report’s authors describe the deep roots of the affordability crisis with what they say is “cruel math”: between 1960 and 2016, median income rose by about 11 percent, while median rents rose by 80 percent.

The pandemic has revealed just how precarious life has become for many of the 35 percent of households in rental housing, says one of the authors, NYU professor Ingrid Gould Ellen, in the latest episode of the Land Matters podcast.

“The decline in affordability over these decades has meant it’s very difficult for these renting households to put aside any savings for a rainy day, much less a global pandemic,” says Ellen, who coauthored the Lincoln Institute’s latest Policy Focus Report with Jeffrey Lubell and Mark Willis. “Even small shocks can put households over the edge.”

Restrictive land use regulations, local opposition to new housing, and a construction industry that’s incentivized to focus on higher-end housing have all contributed to a short supply of more affordable homes. Local governments should establish comprehensive plans, she says, that could aid progress through inclusionary housing, density bonuses, community land trusts, and accessory dwelling units. Some communities have put an end to single family-only zoning, so that multifamily housing can be built in more neighborhoods.

The conversation is the latest in a series devoted to the issues and innovations that are prominent in the work of the Lincoln Institute, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year. Last month the topic was confronting climate change, and this episode is based on another Lincoln Institute goal, reduced poverty and spatial inequality.

You can listen to the show and subscribe to Land Matters on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Anthony Flint is a senior fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and a contributing editor of Land Lines.

Photograph Credit: New York University.

Further reading:

Through the Roof: What Communities Can Do About the High Cost of Rental Housing in America

Inclusionary Housing: Creating and Maintaining Equitable Communities 

“Tracking Growth and Evaluating Performance of Shared Equity Homeownership Programs During Housing Market Fluctuations“

Faced with a housing crisis that has grown even more urgent under the stress of the COVID pandemic, local U.S. governments need to adopt comprehensive and balanced housing strategies to ensure everyone can access a stable and affordable place to live, according to a new Policy Focus Report from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Building on years of research and collaboration with public sector leaders, the authors lay out a multipronged framework for local communities to attack the housing crisis in Through the Roof: What Communities Can Do About the High Cost of Rental Housing in America. Housing policy debates are often split between advocates of deregulation and those who worry about the dangers of an unfettered market. Authors Ingrid Gould Ellen and Mark A. Willis of New York University and Jeffrey Lubell of Abt Associates bridge this gap. They recommend tailored approaches to meet the unique conditions of every community, with a focus on the rental market, where millions of households face unsustainable cost burdens. 

The report builds on the recommendations found on LocalHousingSolutions.org, a website hosted by Abt Associates and the NYU Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy that helps local government officials navigate policy options and craft housing plans.

“Balanced housing strategies are those that address a range of housing challenges, rather than a single narrow one,” the authors write. “Focusing on the full range of needs is important for maximizing both the political acceptance of a local housing strategy and the likelihood that a community’s strategy will succeed.”

The report describes the extent of the affordability crisis, explores the forces that drive housing prices, and explains the interaction among federal, state, and local policy. Its recommendations focus on local government, where most decisions about land use and housing are made in the United States.

“Local governments set the zoning rules that determine how many units can be built on a given piece of land and how many conditions landowners and developers must meet for permission to build at an economically viable density,” the authors write.

As the report details, rents have climbed much faster than incomes in recent decades. Nearly half of American renters now struggle to afford monthly payments, double the number in 1960. This percentage—based on the number of households that spend at least 30 percent of income on rent—has increased steadily for decades, dropping only slightly after the Great Recession as higher-income households delayed homeownership. Today, lower-income renters have less income remaining after paying rent—a measure known as residual income—than they did in 2000, and moderate-income renters have seen no change. Only higher-income renters have seen a small increase in residual income.

The economic impact of the COVID pandemic has deepened the crisis. Despite temporary protections against eviction, Americans collectively owed some $57 billion in back rent, utilities, and late fees in January, according to an estimate by Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, and Jim Parrott, a fellow at the Urban Institute.

While there is some debate about the relationship between regulations and housing prices, on balance, the available evidence suggests that restrictions on the construction of new dwellings limit the supply of housing and contribute to higher prices, the report finds. Examples of such restrictions include minimum lot sizes, bans on multifamily housing, minimum parking requirements, and complex and uncertain permitting processes. 

However, more permissive land-use policies alone will not solve the affordability crisis, the authors write. Other drivers of rising housing costs include the limited availability of land, the impacts of global investment capital, rising income inequality, stagnant incomes, and a lack of innovation in the construction sector. These challenges demand collaboration between the private sector and all levels of government to expand the stock of rental and for-sale housing with binding covenants that ensure long-term affordability and to protect residents from displacement. 

Further, even with more plentiful supply, the lowest income households will have trouble affording rental housing without government intervention. In weaker-market cities with relatively plentiful housing, low incomes are a greater barrier than limited supply. The private market alone is unlikely to reduce economic and racial segregation, which perpetuate disparities in health, wealth, and quality of life.

The report recommends that every community work with a diverse set of stakeholders to create a comprehensive housing strategy with clearly articulated goals and metrics. It offers a four-part framework for local housing reform with a menu of actions in each category:

1. Create and preserve dedicated affordable housing units: Local governments can adopt policies designed to create and preserve housing that stays affordable over time to low- and moderate-income households—including in wealthy neighborhoods. Doing so requires a combination of public expenditure and regulation. Examples of such policies include direct subsidies for dedicated affordable housing, inclusionary housing, in which a portion of new homes are rented or sold below the market rate, and shared equity models such as community land trusts, through which homeowners give up some of the gains in home equity in exchange for a lower purchase price.

2. Reduce barriers to new supply: To expand the overall supply of housing, communities can relax zoning and other regulations, provide incentives for desired housing development and shift the property tax to assess land at a higher rate than buildings, which encourages landowners to develop or sell vacant parcels.

3. Help households access and afford private market homes: Policies in this category include providing assistance to lower-income residents to help them afford private rentals, helping families become homeowners, and enforcing fair housing laws to combat discrimination.

4. Protect against displacement and poor housing conditions: Communities can create stability for renters by enacting protections that limit the rate of rent increases and provide financial and legal help to renters at risk of eviction. Similarly, they can assist low-income homeowners through targeted property tax relief and financial assistance to avoid foreclosure. Finally, communities can use regulations and incentives to encourage landlords to maintain apartments in good condition rather than selling them for conversion to higher-priced housing.

“Whether in San Francisco, California, or Gary, Indiana, too many people struggle to afford one of the most basic human needs—shelter,” said George W. “Mac” McCarthy, president and CEO of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. “Through the Roof recognizes the complexity of the problem and provides an actionable framework for local governments to make housing affordable across a wide variety of market conditions.”

Praise for Through the Roof

“Through the Roof is a ray of light in dark times. Housing has always been at the center of economic and racial inequality in our nation, and it must be at the center of creating real opportunity in every community. The authors explain masterfully how a quiet crisis became a national epidemic of housing insecurity over the past half-century. Even more important, at a time of division and paralysis in our federal government, they show convincingly how cities, towns, and counties can come together to solve our housing challenges and build more just and inclusive communities.”

— Shaun Donovan, Former Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

“The authors provide a thoughtful assessment of why housing affordability has become worse and they tackle the thorny question of what federal, state, and local governments can do to help. They marshal an impressive array of quantitative data and case studies in support of their conclusions, which are economically sound and politically pragmatic. This report will serve as an excellent resource and guide for policy makers.”

— Jenny Schuetz, Fellow, Brookings Institution 

“This report is a comprehensive, powerful look at the affordability crisis—how rent burdens hold families back from upward economic mobility and the actions that government can take to close this gap. An important resource at any time, Through the Roof is even more urgent as we face record unemployment and unprecedented housing instability across the country. Stable, affordable housing for all is a human right, and this report is a necessary guide for policy makers seeking to create this reality for their constituents.”

— Denise Scott, Executive Vice President for Programs, Local Initiatives Support Corporation

“Communities across the country are grappling with the challenge of how to meet the pressing need to build and preserve affordable housing. The COVID-19 crisis underscores the importance of decent, safe, healthy homes. Through the Roof offers critical insight into the housing crisis facing renters. It offers real-world examples of housing solutions. The concepts in Through the Roof should encourage all of us to join this community of practice and put these ideas to work!”

— Linda Mandolini, President, Eden Housing 

About the Authors

Ingrid Gould Ellen is the Paulette Goddard Professor of Urban Policy and Planning at the NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and a faculty director at the NYU Furman Center for Real Estate & Urban Policy.

Jeffrey Lubell is principal associate and director of Housing and Community Initiatives at Abt Associates.

Mark A. Willis is the senior policy fellow at the NYU Furman Center for Real Estate & Urban Policy.

About the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy

The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy seeks to improve quality of life through the effective use, taxation, and stewardship of land. A nonprofit private operating foundation whose origins date to 1946, the Lincoln Institute researches and recommends creative approaches to land as a solution to economic, social, and environmental challenges. Through education, training, publications, and events, we integrate theory and practice to inform public policy decisions worldwide.

Will Jason is director of communications at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Photograph Credit: NicolasMcComber/Getty Images.