Single-family zoning policies have always had a disturbing origin. In 1917, after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down policies that explicitly zoned separate residential areas for blacks and whites, many local governments shifted to a new form of exclusionary zoning: policies that made it illegal to build anything other than single-family homes. These policies delivered many of the same results, by a different means—they kept out most black people, and virtually all low-income people—but the Supreme Court upheld this new practice as legal.

A century later, single-family zoning is widely considered both bad policy and pretty much unchangeable. On the one hand, researchers across the political spectrum find that exclusionary zoning laws build durable walls between racial and socioeconomic groups and fuel the nation’s housing affordability crisis by artificially increase housing prices. Yet, on the other hand, such policies are ubiquitous—“practically gospel in America” says the New York Times—and have long been viewed as impossible to reform.

All of a sudden, however, the seemingly invincible walls that zoning policies have erected are beginning to crumble. Jurisdictions from Massachusetts and Maryland to Oregon and California and the State of Washington are beginning to take action to loosen restrictions. Presidential candidates such as Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker have proposed federal legislation to reduce exclusionary zoning, and President Trump’s secretary of housing and urban development, Ben Carson, is chair of a White House task force that will address exclusionary zoning. Most stunning of all, late last year, the city of Minneapolis did what had long been considered impossible: its Minneapolis 2040 policy completely eliminated single-family zoning policies citywide. Final approval is expected this month.

This report examines Minneapolis’s bold decision to get rid of exclusionary zoning, and proceeds in three parts. The first part details what the Minneapolis policy accomplished. The second part explains how it passed against all odds. And the third part considers the likelihood that the policy can be replicated elsewhere.

The Minneapolis 2040 Plan

The elimination of single-family zoning in Minneapolis is groundbreaking and historic. A city of 425,000 residents, Minneapolis had until recently long been wedded to single-family zoning. It had set aside 70 percent of its residential land for single-family homes. (By contrast, New York allocates just 15 percent of residential land as single-family zones.)

On December 7, 2018, the Minneapolis City Council adopted what the New York Times called a “simple and brilliant” idea of ending single-family zoning citywide. By a twelve-to-one vote, the City Council up-zoned the city to allow duplexes and triplexes on what had been single-family lots, which “effectively triples the housing capacity” in many neighborhoods. (The one holdout was a councilmember from the wealthy Southwest section of Minneapolis, where schools are mostly white.) The City Council’s plan was subsequently approved by the Metropolitan Council in September 2019 and a final City Council vote is scheduled for October 2019.

The elimination of single-family zoning was accompanied by a package that included four other reforms. First, the policy created the possibility of more housing density near transit stops by allowing the construction of new three-to-six story buildings. Second, the policy eliminated off-street minimum parking requirements—the fourth city in the United States to do so. This is important, because off-street parking requirements can increase costs and serve as “a poison pill for low-cost housing,” according to the Brookings Institution. Third, the package included a provision for “inclusionary zoning”—requiring that new apartment developments set aside 10 percent of units for moderate-income households. Fourth, the city council approved increased funding for affordable housing from $15 million to $40 million in order to combat homelessness and provide immediate relief to low-income renters.

All elements of the plan were important, but it was the elimination of single-family zoning—unprecedented in audacity and scale for a major U.S. city—that caught the imagination of observers. “No municipality has taken a more dramatic response to the housing gap than Minneapolis,” one observer noted.

How Minneapolis Ended Single-Family Zoning

How was Minneapolis able to enact reform when so many other jurisdictions have run into a buzzsaw of homeowner resistance and not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) attitudes? What were the most persuasive arguments advanced in favor of reform? What was backlash like, and how did advocates of change respond? What tactics did they employ? What political coalitions proved crucial? In interviews with key participants, a number of important lessons emerged that could be useful for advocates in other jurisdictions.

The Arguments Advanced for Reform

Proponents of eliminating single-family zoning in Minneapolis advanced three major arguments: reform would make the city more affordable, by expanding the supply of housing; it would make the city fairer, by reducing racial and economic segregation; and it would combat climate change, by reducing commutes and making housing more environmentally friendly.

Addressing the Affordability Crisis



To begin with, proponents of the 2040 plan argued, single-family zoning was driving an affordability crisis in Minneapolis. By outlawing the construction of duplexes, triplexes, and other multi-family units, single-family zoning artificially drove up prices by government fiat.

By outlawing the construction of duplexes, triplexes, and other multi-family units, single-family zoning artificially drove up prices by government fiat.

Studies found that housing supply wasn’t keeping up with growth. The Metropolitan Council found that the city had only built 64,000 new homes since 2010, while adding 83,000 households. With too many residents chasing too few housing options, the city had apartment vacancy rates as low as 2.2 percent. (Economists suggest a 5 percent vacancy rate is one that will produce a healthy environment in which rents don’t exceed inflation.) “When you have demand that is sky-high, and you don’t have the supply to keep up with it, prices rise. Rents rise,” noted Mayor Jacob Frey.

More than half of Minneapolis’s residents are renters, and half of those renters are “cost-burdened,” meaning they are spending more than one-third of their income on rent. Moreover, the problem was projected to persist in the future. The Family Housing Fund estimated that Minneapolis was only on pace to build about three-quarters of the needed housing in coming decades. Building more units, supporters said, would put supply and demand back in balance and reduce upward pressure on housing prices.

Reducing Economic and Racial Segregation



Advocates of the 2040 plan argued that single-family zoning should end because it fosters economic and racial segregation, which harms the community. “Large swaths of our city are exclusively zoned for single-family homes, so unless you have the ability to build a very large home on a very large lot, you can’t live in the neighborhood,” Mayor Frey told Slate.

Minneapolis has a vibrant level of racial and economic diversity overall, but families of different races and incomes often live in different parts of the city—a fact driven, in part, by single-family zoning, critics suggested.

In 2018, Minneapolis’s population was 60 percent white, 19 percent black, 10 percent Hispanic, and 6 percent Asian, and the median household income for the years 2013 to 2017 was $55,720. Somali immigrants have a particularly large presence in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. But the community was often segregated by race and class. While the regional economy is spurred by such Fortune 500 companies as UnitedHealth Group, Target, and Best Buy, the wealth is very unevenly distributed. Many North Side households struggle economically, and 70 percent of its residents are people of color, while the South Side is more affluent and white.

Proponents of the 2040 plan pointed directly to the role of single-family zoning in fostering segregation. Nationally, single-family zoning often popped up in communities shortly after racial zoning was declared illegal as an indirect means of keeping black people out of neighborhoods. “Single-family zoning became basically the only option to try to maintain both race and class segregation,” notes Jessica Trounstine of the University of California, Merced.

In Minneapolis, as in many parts of the country, through much of the mid-twentieth century, banks refused to provide housing loans to residents in heavily black neighborhoods—a process known as redlining, because these areas were marked by red lines on a map. “Today’s zoning is built on those old redlining maps,” said the city’s long-range planning director Heather Worthington. Minneapolis City Council president Lisa Bender, who was a driving force behind the 2040 plan, noted that Minneapolis had “codified racial exclusion through zoning.” Another city councilman noted the importance of the historical record in the debates over the 2040 plan. “That history,” said Cam Gordon, “helped people realize that the way the city is set up right now is based on the government-endorsed and sanctioned racist system.” By owning up to its past, says Slate’s Henry Grabor, Minneapolis is “one of the rare U.S. metropolises to publicly confront the racist roots of single-family zoning.”

The troublesome history of single-family zoning took on contemporary relevance given deep contemporary racial disparities in Minneapolis. The 2040 plan notes that the gap in home ownership rates between whites (59 percent) and African Americans (21 percent) was enormous. Indeed, it was the widest in any of the one hundred cities with sizable African American populations.

Today, single-family zoning is a tool that limits opportunities for low-income and minority students to attend strong schools. The South Side of Minneapolis, which is primarily zoned for single-family homes, contains most of the public schools that are rated as high performing. The Southwest quadrant of the city is particularly white and affluent. “It’s like the suburb in the city,” says Kyrra Rankine, a supporter of school integration and of the 2040 plan. In theory, public school choice could equalize opportunities for low-income students living in high-poverty neighborhoods. But in Minneapolis, choice tends to exacerbate, rather than aleve, segregation. While low-income Minneapolis students can theoretically request to transfer to a high performing school outside their attendance area affluent schools tend to be overcrowded already. Even when low-income families know of the opportunities, those requests can be rejected on the basis of space constraints (which is typical). And families are required to provide their own transportation—a major hardship for those who are low income.

Access to high performing schools matters, because powerful evidence suggests that low-income students perform much better, on average, when given the opportunity to attend such schools. In Montgomery County, Maryland, for example, low-income and minority students who were given a chance to attend more affluent schools significantly outperformed low-income students in high-poverty schools—even though those disadvantaged schools spent $2,000 more per pupil.

Proponents of the 2040 plan put racial and economic justice at the center of their campaign. Their powerful moral argument was that, just as the 1968 Fair Housing Act outlawed redlining, it was long past time to eliminate single-family zoning as well.

Fighting Climate Change



The third argument advanced by proponents of 2040’s plan to eliminate single-family zoning and build more housing near transit stops was that it would be good for the environment. This argument had special resonance with young people.

Single-family zoning, one observer noted in writing about Minneapolis, is “a policy that has done as much as any to entrench . . . sprawl.” By artificially propping up housing prices and forcing families to move further and further out to find affordable housing, single-family zoning puts more cars on the road for longer commutes, resulting in more greenhouse gases. Multifamily units also have a smaller carbon footprint than housing the same number of residents in single-family homes, because apartments have fewer exterior walls, making them easier to heat and cool and thus more energy efficient than single-family homes.

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The Backlash to Minneapolis 2040 and the Response to It

The trio of arguments in favor of the 2040 plan was supported by considerable evidence, but that did not mean that the proposal was going to be easily adopted. Indeed, the backlash when the plan was introduced in 2018 was predictable, swift, and strong.

Critics called the elimination of single-family zoning a gift to developers, who would change the “character” of neighborhoods by overbuilding. Red signs emblazoned with, “Don’t Bulldoze Our Neighborhood” proliferated, particularly in wealthy Southwest Minneapolis. Critics were especially contemptuous of an initial plan to allow fourplexes, which opponents labeled “freyplexes,” after Mayor Jacob Frey. Town meetings became vitriolic. Critics charged that developers would just tear down starter homes and build high-end duplexes and triplexes that would do nothing to actually help those seeking affordable housing.

Several members of the Minneapolis City Council voiced concerns about the initial plan. Andrew Johnson in Ward 12, for example, said the proposal would be received “like a lead balloon” by his constituents. Some developers were not happy with a proposal—eventually included—for “inclusionary zoning” requirements for low-income families in new multi-family developments. And the Audubon Chapter of Minneapolis, ignoring the evidence cited by other environmentalists about how single-family zoning contributes to climate change, brought a lawsuit to stop the policy from moving forward.

In many jurisdictions, this array of opposition might have ended any possible reform. But in Minneapolis, progressive forces fought back, point by point:

The specter of an army of new bulldozers taking over neighborhoods with single-family homes didn’t seem so daunting, supporters of the 2040 plan said, because people were of course free to keep their homes as is. Moreover, neighbors were already tearing down starter homes to build McMansions. What was so wrong with a developer instead building three small units in a building of the same size? In fact, supporters of the 2040 plan pointed out that a ringleader of the opposition, as it turned out, lived in a 4,500 square foot house that had been erected after a smaller home was bulldozed.

The “character” of neighborhoods might change with the addition of some duplexes and triplexes, supporters of the 2040 plan noted, but wouldn’t it be a step forward if a community’s character came to include people from different walks of life?

Likewise, it might be true that some builders would develop high-end units under the new rules, but even that would reduce overall housing costs in other units, supporters noted, by easing demand for older homes. If there were, for example, an artificial ceiling on the number of new cars that were built each year, people would compete and thus bid up the price of used cars; removing the limit and allowing the sale of new cars—even if expensive—would help moderate the price of used cars; the same principle applies in housing. Furthermore, the inclusionary zoning requirements for new apartment buildings erected under the 2040 plan meant that even high-end developments would have some units that were affordable.

Finally, to blunt criticisms about “freyplexes,” supporters of the 2040 plan modestly scaled it back to allow duplexes and triplexes, but not fourplexes, in areas previously zoned for single-family homes. General requirements about height and yard space remained unchanged in those zones, making duplexes and triplexes less daunting for neighbors.

Smart Tactics

In addition to advancing persuasive rebuttals to opponents of reform on the merits, as this section will show, advocates of the 2040 plan engaged in a number of smart tactics that help explain the initiative’s success. Supporters began slow, by laying the groundwork with small changes. They helped elect a new generation of leaders who understood concerns young people have about housing affordability, racial justice, and climate change. Activists then assembled a broad coalition that included progressives from all races and economic groups, as well as members of civil rights, community, and tenants groups, and labor leaders and environmentalists. The city engaged in extensive outreach to gather input that reached far beyond the usual suspects. And, after going slow, supporters went big: calling for a citywide elimination of single-family zoning that didn’t leave some neighborhoods feeling singled out.

Laying the Groundwork with Incremental Change



Long before reformers pushed hard to eliminate single-family zoning, they began with a more modest proposal. In 2014, councilmember Lisa Bender backed a successful plan to allow residents in single-family zoned communities to add small in-law flats, technically referred to as “Accessory Dwelling Units” (ADUs). At the time, one council member raised the specter of ADU’s becoming houses of prostitution. But when some 140 ADUs were added, and fears were not borne out, moving the next step to allowing duplexes and triplexes “didn’t require a huge leap of faith,” Bender noted.

Helping Elect a New Generation of Leaders



In November 2017, supporters of housing reform helped elect several young leaders to positions of power in Minneapolis. The newly elected mayor, Jacob Frey, was just 36 years old. And a major shift occurred when five new members were elected to the city council, which then consisted of twelve Democrats and one member of the Green Party. In January 2018, the council elevated then-39-year-old Lisa Bender to council president.

The generational shift was important, says Janne Flisrand, a cofounder of Neighbors for More Neighbors, an umbrella organization that pushed for housing reform. The split in Minneapolis over housing was not so much Republican versus Democrat, she said, but older Democrats versus younger ones. The younger elected officials, she said, “get how housing, racial justice, school success, school segregation and climate and all these other issues fit together” in a way that some older Democrats did not. Frey, who is himself a renter, made affordable housing “one of the centerpieces of his 2017 campaign.”

Establishing a Powerful Coalition of Disparate Groups



In addition, when the 2040 plan was proposed, supporters created a new umbrella organization, Neighbors for More Neighbors, to spearhead the fight for the policy. The group’s name was a brilliant reminder to people of the shared humanity of those who wanted to be included—they were people, too, who simply wanted to be neighbors.

Neighbors for More Neighbors was aligned with the national YIMBY (Yes In My Backyard) movement that is heavily white, highly educated, and upper-middle class. Organizers recognized that, as such, they should only be part of a much larger, more socioeconomically and racially diverse coalition in favor of reform that included civil rights groups and labor, as well as environmentalists, and seniors. YIMBY activists in California had failed in their effort to win a major reform of single-family zoning in 2018 in part because they did not make alliances with more diverse community groups. In fact, many anti-gentrification community groups allied with NIMBY conservatives to oppose reform in California.

Minneapolis avoided California’s fate by bringing community groups and civil rights advocates into the fight early on and putting racial justice front and center. Of fourteen goals outlined by supporters, eliminating racial, ethnic, and economic disparities was goal number one. By boosting funding for affordable housing to $40 million, and tying the end of exclusionary single-family zoning to a separate affirmative effort at inclusionary zoning, advocates of the 2040 plan gave good reasons for civil rights and community groups to be supportive of the effort.

Also, in contrast to the push in California, supporters of the 2040 plan put a major emphasis on gathering authentic input from community groups in the engagement process (see details below)—an important step too often ignored. The issue-based organization African Career, Education, and Resource, Inc., for example, supported the 2040 plan with extensive community engagement, at church meetings and community meetings, based on the philosophy, says the group’s program director, Denise Butler, that “community members are the stakeholders and they are the true experts of their environment.”

Labor unions—particularly those with low-income and minority membership—were also an important part of the push for the 2040 plan. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Healthcare Minnesota, which represents a large number of mostly low-income health care workers, provided critical political muscle for the coalition. Rick Varco, political director of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota, explained that, while his union mostly focuses on statewide issues, his members convinced him that local housing issues were of critical concern. Members told Varco they couldn’t afford to live in Minneapolis, near their jobs, and so many would have to take a “two and one half hour bus ride, with two transfers, to get to work.” For many of SEIU’s members, “housing is just an enormous cost for them,” so the union realized “it was important for us to do and say something about it,” he said. In October 2018, Varco testified in favor of the 2040 plan before the City Planning Commission, noting the change in zoning would reduce housing costs without costing the city a penny. The current system of exclusionary zoning, he said, “simply elevates a few winners while depriving the large mass of workers the housing they need.” In a resolution, SEIU also noted that 2040 would help the economy and “promote union construction jobs.”

Tenant rights organizations also had reason to support the 2040 plan. Policy 41 in the package of reforms called for taking several steps to protect tenant rights. Among the provisions was one to “provide funding to community-based organizations that proactively help tenants understand and enforce their rights, and assist financially with emergency housing relocation.” Environmental groups also provided strong support for the 2040 plan. The Sierra Club, and MN 350, a group fighting climate change, were both important in the 2040 plan effort.

Many young people also supported the 2040 plan as a way of making Minneapolis neighborhoods more affordable, diverse, and walkable. And although older residents were often opponents of the plan, some seniors also supported it, as did the Association for the Advancement of Retired People (AARP). Some seniors recognized that subdividing a house into multiple units provides a way for elderly residents to age in place while bringing in extra income from tenants.

On the surface, developers would have a strong interest in loosening rules on development and increasing density, but Flisrand of Neighbors for More Neighbors said they were “nowhere to be seen” and had “zero involvement with Neighbors for More Neighbors.” Her theory is that successful for-profit developers knew how to navigate the current system, and so did not have a strong incentive to push for the 2040 plan because they might lose their competitive advantage.

Employers and libertarians—two potential allies who have advocated for single-family zoning reform elsewhere—did not really factor into the coalition in Minneapolis, local organizers say.

Seeking Input from beyond the Usual Suspects



One of the stumbling blocks to eliminating single-family zoning in many communities is that those who show up for council and zoning meetings tend to be wealthy, white homeowners who feel threatened by reform. A 2018 study by Boston University researchers Katherine Levine Einstein, Maxwell Palmer, and David Glick looking at the minutes from zoning and planning meetings in ninety-seven Massachusetts municipalities found that “the advantaged dominated the meetings”—meaning older, male, white homeowners. According to the study, in Lawrence, Massachusetts, where the population is 75 percent Latinx, for example, over a three-year period, only one resident with an Hispanic surname ever spoke at planning and zoning meetings. By contrast, lower-income communities, immigrant communities, and communities of color tend not to be part of the discussion, because members of those groups are often pressed for time as they work several jobs, don’t have transportation to get to meetings, must attend to child care needs, and/or don’t feel welcome at public meetings. Minneapolis, says Flisrand, wanted to break loose of that pattern and move beyond just the usual suspects. “The city made a point of creating an engagement pathway” for marginalized communities, she said.

If there was a secret ingredient in Minneapolis’s success, it was community engagement, Flisrand said. The city engaged in a multi-year effort to gain input. Every ten years, Minneapolis launches a long-term planning process, and the city’s Long Range Planning Team within the Community Planning and Economic Development department recognized explicitly that “Historically, people of color and indigenous communities (POCI), renters, and people from low-income backgrounds have been underrepresented in the civic process.” Beginning in 2016, planners attended festivals and street fairs. They didn’t ask jargon-laden questions about “housing density,” and instead asked big-picture questions such as: “Are you satisfied with the housing options available to you right now?” and “What does your ideal Minneapolis look like in 2040?” The city also encouraged residents to hold “Meetings in a Box,” whereby individuals were provided forms and surveys to seek input from community members at a time and place that was convenient.

Running parallel to this process, Neighbors for More Neighbors helped community members attend the council meetings, heavily covered by the media, and encouraged people to wear purple so that supporters could find one another and feel comfortable. The group also created purple lawn signs that said, “End the Shortage; Build Homes Now,” and “Neighbors for More Neighbors,” that sent a positive signal that we “want a city that is growing and welcoming.” In the end, says Flisrand, “Instead of hearing the same old powerful perspectives, we got to hear diverse perspectives.”

Going Big



Paradoxically, one of the lessons of Minneapolis was that, after going slow—building on incremental support for in-law flats, then painstakingly seeking input from residents—supporters of the 2040 plan succeeded by going big. Rather than seeking the elimination of single-family zoning in parts of the city, they sought to eliminate it in every single community citywide where it existed.

Traditionally, reformers have sought to “upzone” neighborhoods piece by piece, in part based on the theory that upzoning an entire city would consolidate opposition from disparate neighborhoods. But Minneapolis’s director of long-range planning, Heather Worthington, says going big—citywide—turned out to be a political advantage. “If we were going to pick and choose, the fight I think would have been even bloodier.” When only some neighborhoods are chosen for change, locals can feel singled out. Salim Furth of the conservative Mercatus Center told the New York Times that sweeping, citywide change may be easier to achieve than community-by-community change.

Can Minneapolis’s Bold Policy Be Replicated?

After Minneapolis accomplished what many thought to be impossible—citywide elimination of single-family zoning—observers began asking whether the lessons of Minneapolis could transfer elsewhere. Was Minneapolis a one-off, a unicorn in housing policy? Or could some of the strategies employed be applied successfully elsewhere?

On one level, there is some reason for skepticism about whether the 2040 plan’s success can be exported to other cities, which have different political and economic conditions. Forbes magazine rated Minneapolis the sixth most liberal city in the United States. Of the thirteen members of the city council, the only non-Democratic member is from the Green Party. A more conservative jurisdiction might provide tougher terrain for reform.

The New York Times suggested that reform was easier to accomplish in Minneapolis than in places such as San Francisco, because Minneapolis’s housing prices are still “relatively modest, so its population includes a lot of middle-class families.” (The median home price in 2018 was $250.000.) The New York Times continued: “Housing debates in coastal cities pit the wealthy against the poor, and middle ground has been hard to find.”

On the other hand, there is some reason to believe that Minneapolis could be the start of something bigger.

To begin with, political ideology is not necessarily the biggest predictor of whether people support or oppose single-family zoning. Many conservatives have applauded zoning reform. President Trump’s Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Ben Carson—who has an otherwise troubling record on fair housing issues —visited Minneapolis and said he would like other cities to follow suit and eliminate single-family zoning. “Look at some of the places that have the biggest homelessness problems, like Los Angeles, where 80 percent of the land is zoned for single-family housing, with a certain amount of property,” he said. “The correlation seems very strong. The more zoning restrictions and regulations, the higher the prices and the more homeless people.” In fact, in June 2019, President Trump signed an executive order creating a White House Council, headed by Carson, to study exclusionary zoning laws.

Political ideology is not necessarily the biggest predictor of whether people support or oppose single-family zoning. Many conservatives have applauded zoning reform.

Libertarians were enthusiastic about the Minneapolis plan. Christian Britschgi, writing in the conservative Reason magazine, hailed Minneapolis’s plan as “one of the most deregulatory housing reforms in the country,” an embodiment of “libertarian policies.” “Free marketers should celebrate the vote,” he wrote. Rick Varco, the SEIU political director in Minnesota, says he thinks some conservatives would support banning single-family zoning in other cities. “Small government conservatives,” who want to get “the government out of the business of telling people they can’t build,” along with “fiscal conservatives” who want “to grow the tax base,” might support reform of single-family zoning, he said.

Moreover, the fact that some coastal cities have higher housing prices than Minneapolis might not be a deterrent to reform, but rather a catalyst. In cities where housing prices are making it difficult to attract employees, employers have joined with others to urge reform of single-family zoning—providing political support not particularly visible in Minneapolis.

Indeed, following the December 2018 Minneapolis City Council vote to eliminate single-family zoning, city officials have been fielding calls from municipalities across the country. Leaders from Arlington, Virginia and Charlotte, North Carolina, for example, invited Minneapolis officials to speak about the 2040 plan. In March 2019, Seattle modified 27 single-family zones to allow for development of multi-family units. It was a modest change that affected just 6 percent of lots, but represented a step forward nevertheless. In May, 2019, Austin, Texas’s City Council approved a plan to allow developers to build up to six units in plots that were zoned for single-family homes, if builders agreed to set aside some units for families of modest means.

Momentum continued in other parts of the country. In July 2019, the City Council of Montgomery County, Maryland, a suburb of 1 million people outside Washington, D.C., unanimously approved a controversial measure to make it easier to construct in-law flats in areas zoned for single-family homes. In doing so, the council faced down vocal opposition, which had falsely claimed that the move would turn the county “into a slum.” And in September 2019, California lawmakers passed a state law requiring all municipalities to allow the construction of up to two in-law flats in areas zoned for single-family residences, despite the opposition of the League of California Cities.

But by far the biggest sign that Minneapolis’s success was not a fluke is the action taken by the State of Oregon in July 2019. In what’s been called an historic development, a bipartisan group of legislators passed a statewide ban on single-family zoning in cities with populations of at least 10,000 residents. In all those cities, parcels that had been reserved for single-family homes must allow duplexes; and in cities with populations larger than 25,000, lots that had been limited to single-family homes must also allow multifamily units up to fourplexes. The plan, which was signed by the governor in August 2019, has particular significance for Oregon’s biggest city, Portland, in which 77 percent of residential land had been limited to single-family homes.

The legislation was truly groundbreaking because it represented the nation’s first statewide ban on single-family zoning. To accomplish this feat, supporters had to overcome opposition of the Oregon League of Cities, which like organizations representing municipalities nationwide, jealously guarded its prerogative to set zoning rules on a local basis. Also notable was the wide bipartisan support for the legislation in votes in both the Senate (17 to 9) and House (43 to 16).

Michael Stegman, a veteran of the Obama administration who has written about the political obstacles to exclusionary zoning reform, even within a liberal administration, calls developments in Minneapolis and Oregon “promising spearheads.” The bipartisan Yes in My Back Yard (YIMBY) Act to discourage exclusionary zoning gives further evidence of the growing political appeal of this issue on Capitol Hill. New polling also suggests possibilities to promote equitable zoning. When voters were asked, “Would you support or oppose a policy to ensure smaller, lower-cost homes like duplexes, townhouses, and garden apartments can be built in middle- and upper- class neighborhoods?” supporters outnumbered opponents by two to one in a 2019 poll.

Conclusion

There has long been a consensus among researchers that single-family zoning is bad for housing affordability, bad for the environment, and bad for racial justice. As a matter of basic human dignity, moreover, it is humiliating for local governments to tell people of modest means that they are not welcome in that community and that their children are not welcome in the public schools. It is one thing for a market to discriminate by income; markets function by providing incentives and rewards. It is an entirely different thing for a government to put its heavy thumb on the scale of a market in favor of the wealthy, and to say that those who cannot afford to live in single-family dwellings should be banned from entire communities—that their presence would be, in essence, a “nuisance” to be kept out, akin to an industrial factory or slaughter house.

For decades, however, efforts to end single-family zoning has been regarded as a fool’s errand. Anyone attempting to do so has been seen as tilting at windmills. That is why what happened in Minneapolis is so significant. Advocates of affordable housing, civil rights, and the environment joined forces with labor unions, tenant activists, the young, and the old, to bring down the invisible but durable wall of government-mandated, single-family zoning. Libertarians and small-government conservatives, meanwhile, applauded the move from afar, suggesting that reform might be possible elsewhere. At long last, it seems, it may be possible to begin to bury an anachronistic practice that has done so much harm for so long.