Not long ago, I read an inter­est­ing new book on zon­ing pol­i­cy: Neigh­bor­hood Defend­ers, by three polit­i­cal sci­en­tists at Boston Uni­ver­si­ty. As the title indi­cates, the book focus­es on peo­ple who try to lim­it new devel­op­ment in their neigh­bor­hood; although I and many oth­ers have often used the term “NIMBY” (Not In My Back Yard) to describe them, the authors sug­gest that the term “neigh­bor­hood defend­ers” more accu­rate­ly describes what oppo­nents of hous­ing think they are doing—defending their neigh­bor­hood from unwel­come devel­op­ment.

These neigh­bor­hood defend­ers are able to exclude hous­ing because of the pub­lic process sur­round­ing zon­ing. Because zon­ing laws are so com­pli­cat­ed, new build­ing often requires a zon­ing change, which under cur­rent law near­ly always requires a pub­lic hear­ing. Neigh­bor­hood defend­ers flock to these hear­ings and fight the project. Even if a city coun­cil is pro-hous­ing, law­suits or the threat of law­suits can slow devel­op­ment down. For exam­ple, the authors show that a high num­ber of zon­ing-relat­ed law­suits cor­re­lates with a low­er share of per­mits in mul­ti­fam­i­ly build­ings.

Based on a sur­vey of dozens of towns in met­ro­pol­i­tan Boston, the authors show that the num­ber of zon­ing reg­u­la­tions is cor­re­lat­ed with low lev­els of hous­ing pro­duc­tion, espe­cial­ly low lev­els of mul­ti­fam­i­ly hous­ing pro­duc­tion. Sub­urbs with many dif­fer­ent types of reg­u­la­tion have few­er new apart­ments or con­dos, and the build­ings that are devel­oped in these sub­urbs have few­er units. This cor­re­la­tion is not lim­it­ed to reg­u­la­tions direct­ly lim­it­ed to hous­ing sup­ply (such as den­si­ty lim­its); even more seem­ing­ly innocu­ous reg­u­la­tions can be used to delay hous­ing. In oth­er words, more reg­u­la­tion means less new hous­ing.

Con­ven­tion­al eco­nom­ic wis­dom sug­gests that neigh­bor­hood defend­ers are moti­vat­ed pri­mar­i­ly by a desire to pro­tect their prop­er­ty val­ues by lim­it­ing new hous­ing. On the oth­er hand, some new urban­ists would like to believe that pret­ti­er projects would be more pop­u­lar. The authors went through meet­ing min­utes in Mass­a­chu­setts towns, and dis­cov­ered that neigh­bor­hood defend­ers are more like­ly to raise con­cerns about traf­fic and envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns than either aes­thet­ic or eco­nom­ic con­cerns. Less than 10 per­cent of com­menters in the authors’ sam­ple direct­ly men­tioned aes­thet­ic con­cerns, and even few­er men­tioned home val­ues. This may mean that neigh­bor­hood defend­ers real­ly believe that new devel­op­ment is bad because it brings traf­fic and envi­ron­men­tal degradation—or that they are sophis­ti­cat­ed enough to know that com­plain­ing about ugly apart­ments or prop­er­ty val­ues might not be as per­sua­sive as traf­fic-relat­ed and envi­ron­men­tal argu­ments.

The tra­di­tion­al jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for pub­lic meet­ings about zon­ing is that com­menters rep­re­sent the pub­lic. The authors dis­prove this idea: com­menters at zon­ing meet­ings are much more like­ly to be home­own­ers as opposed to renters, and are whiter, old­er and more male. In the towns sur­veyed, 73 per­cent of com­menters were home­own­ers, as opposed to 46 per­cent of all vot­ers. Only 5 per­cent of com­menters were non­white, as opposed to 13 per­cent of all vot­ers. Non­whites were gen­er­al­ly more pro-hous­ing than whites; just under 15 per­cent of white com­menters sup­port­ed new hous­ing, as opposed to 45 per­cent of blacks. On the oth­er hand, the sam­ple of black com­menters was so small (only 60) that I am not sure this fact is sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant. His­pan­ic com­menters were even more anti-hous­ing than whites—but here too, the sam­ple size (29 com­menters) seems too small to be pro­ba­tive.

The authors sug­gest that the opin­ions of neigh­bor­hood defend­ers are not rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the pub­lic as a whole. They rely on the results of a 2010 ref­er­en­dum in Mass­a­chu­setts on repeal­ing Ch. 40B. Most vot­ers vot­ed no—that is, they sup­port­ed afford­able hous­ing. By con­trast, only 15 per­cent of com­menters spoke in sup­port of new hous­ing at zon­ing hear­ings. On the oth­er hand, it could be argued that vot­ers were hap­py to sup­port new hous­ing as long as it was like­ly to be in some­one else’s neigh­bor­hood, or that they pre­ferred low-income hous­ing to mar­ket-rate hous­ing. 

Thus, zon­ing cre­ates a col­lec­tive action prob­lem: what might be good for each indi­vid­ual neigh­bor­hood (pre­vent­ing new hous­ing) is bad for the city or region as a whole. To solve this prob­lem, the authors favor city­wide and statewide zon­ing reforms, as well as more fed­er­al sup­port for low-income hous­ing.