Comments on: Land-Use Regulation & Income Inequality

By: Frank

Frank — Sun, 12 Aug 2012 03:14:57 +0000

To play devil’s advocate, is it possible that homes are more expensive in Portland and Boulder because they are prettier cities closer to great natural features? (I know we’ve had this conversation here before and many don’t consider the Gorge and the Front Range amenities.) Is it also possible that houses are more in these areas because geography limits growth?

By: The Antiplanner

The Antiplanner — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 20:58:02 +0000

"the major zoning that has afflicted the less well off is the suburban exclusionary zoning with such things as minimum lot size" That's a major myth that has no basis in reality. Almost all incorporated suburbs of Houston are zoned, yet housing remains very affordable. Zoning does not make housing unaffordable if it is responsive to the market; that is, if the zoning of greenfields can be easily changed in response to what the owners or developers want to do. This is the way it works in most of the Midwest and South; it is mainly on the Pacific Coast and New England states where zoning and planning have made housing unaffordable. Consider this: according to the Coldwell Banker home price index, in 2011 a 4-bedroom, 2-1/2 bath home in a middle-class neighborhood in Houston (no zoning) costs $187,000; in Atlanta (zoning) $255,000; in Portland (growth management), $357,000; in Boulder (slow growth), $860,000. So zoning may have added a little to the cost of housing, but growth management is the main culprit.

By: cfmskeptic

cfmskeptic — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 16:43:50 +0000

As others have pointed out, the major zoning that has afflicted the less well off is the suburban exclusionary zoning with such things as minimum lot size. This is then compounded by those same suburbs attracting shopping centers, office parks and light industry making certain that most of the workers can’t afford to live there. These various places of employment are set back nicely from the road, in most cases with no sidewalks so there is little grouping of destinations, again due to zoning. Then we wonder why transit doesn’t run full in the peak period trying to serve these places. Yes planners, elected officials, and developers have caused major problems but it is primarily the suburban planners, elected officials and developer who have done so.

By: transitboy

transitboy — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 00:30:35 +0000

Any discussion of the decline in wages of the average American would have to include the decline of the influence of labor unions resulting in blue collar wages significantly going down. While many in transit celebrate contracting out in transit as a way of saving money – which it does – it would be good to remember how it saves money – by paying people less.

By: MJ

MJ — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 22:55:37 +0000

Most studies that purport to show increases in inequality typically focus on self-reported pre-tax incomes, so marginal income tax rates have little to do with it. The 30-year period you point to also coincides with a number of other trends that represent viable explanations for income divergence, especially increases in returns to skill and expansion of global market/scale effects, which make the returns to the development of new products much larger.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 20:20:54 +0000

Its far easier to correlate the income inequality trends to the enacting of the income tax in 1913 and its increase in rates through 1981, when rates on top earners an unearned income began a 30 year period of being slashed, causing, shockingly, more income to flow to those in the top brackets.

By: Dan

Dan — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 00:37:39 +0000

Ah. Yes, I agree and I think both our points are valid, and I’m being unclear. I agree that rich areas have made it harder to build anything but housing for the rich. What I’m saying is that the home price increase is not the only reason for the divergence.

BTW, right away they mention Glaeser’s work (that they extend in a different way), which we’ve discussed here several times, and it is instructive: Glaeser (et al) found that the zoning for larger minimum lot sizes was a major reason for the price rises in the U.S. NE.

That is: zoning to keep lower incomes out. This paper looked at appellate court cases to find regulation changes, which captures more than lot sizes: it capturs uses (MFR bans, accessory dwellings, covenant design controls, etc which are indicators of different measures to maintain/raise quality of life).

You’ll find several planners on here lamenting this sort of zoning and asserting that eliminating Euclidean zoning would partially solve for the large-lot single-fam American Dream that limits housing supply.

By: MJ

MJ — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 20:41:12 +0000

That’s not the correct interpretation. You’re conflating the overall goodness-of-fit of the model with the significance of the variable of interest.

The authors tested their hypothesis about a relationship between regulatory stringency and income convergence. They found evidence of a statistically significant relationship between these variables with the expected sign. The fact that the estimated parameter was statistically significant means, among other things, that it is not likely that this relationship came about by chance.

By: JimKarlock

JimKarlock — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 20:02:22 +0000

Video of American Nightmare:
//vimeo.com/45418756

Thanks
JK

By: C. P. Zilliacus

C. P. Zilliacus — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 18:37:33 +0000

Jim, I respectfully disagree. But if you replace the word planners with the words elected officials (who must approve or reject what the planners propose), then we are in agreement.