Jerusalem Demsas, a writer for Vox, thinks people should “sue the suburbs” to eliminate their exclusionary zoning, meaning single-family zoning. Her example is Franklin, Tennessee, a suburb made well-off by the location of North American corporate headquarters for both Nissan and Mitsubishi.
As a result, the median home price in Franklin is higher than nearby Nashville. Demsas blames that on exclusionary zoning. But incomes in Franklin are higher than Nashville; when compared with incomes, Franklin housing is actually more affordable than Nashville’s. Considering all of the businesses located in Franklin, it is only a suburb in the sense that it is near Nashville, not in the sense that huge numbers of commuters pour into Nashville from Franklin every morning.
Demsas says that Franklin’s relatively small share of multifamily housing is evidence of exclusionary zoning. In fact, it is just evidence that when people get enough income, they prefer to live in single-family housing. Using 2019 American Community Survey data for more than 500 cities across the country, there is almost no correlation between the percentage of housing that is multifamily and the affordability of housing in those cities (correlation = 0.3 where 1 is perfect and 0 means no correlation). Continue reading
