HUD Backs Off on Housing Mandate

In a case with national ramifications, the Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD) has effectively given up on its efforts to impose high-density housing on low-density suburbs in the name of racial integration. HUD had ordered Westchester County, New York, to build low-income housing in response to claims that county zoning led to segregated housing.

This was widely seen as the model for HUD’s affirmatively furthering fair housing rule, which requires local governments that have received federal housing funds to review local housing patterns with the de facto assumption that, if the community is not perfectly integrated, whatever segregation exists must be due to local zoning rules making housing less affordable.

In response to HUD’s order, Westchester County had submitted an analysis finding that, while the county was not perfectly integrated, local zoning was not the cause. The Obama administration had rejected this analysis, but the current administration accepted a new analysis that “essentially the same” as the rejected one.

There are at least two problems with the assumptions behind the Westchester case and the Obama administration’s rule. First, with or without zoning, homeowners tend to sort themselves into neighborhoods by income. For example, high-income people are more likely to shop at Whole Foods while low-income people are more likely to shop at Walmart, so people locating in neighborhoods close to their preferred retailer will end up segregating themselves by income. You can find this sorting in unzoned Houston and its unzoned suburbs just as much as in zoned Dallas or anywhere else, showing that income segregation may have nothing to do with racial discrimination.
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Second, contrary to Obama administration claims, local zoning of developed areas doesn’t make housing less affordable; instead, unaffordability results from regional zoning, i.e., zoning that restricts the use of undeveloped land. Attempts to counter regional zoning with subsidized housing are doomed to fail because it would take massive amounts of housing subsidies to overcome land shortages.

A third problem is that a hidden agenda behind the Obama rule was to promote the New Urbanist goal (sometimes called smart growth) of turning suburbs into high-density, mixed-use Greenwich Villages, based on the Jane Jacobs’ view that Greenwich Village was the ideal urban design. But New Urban villages can often be more expensive, not less, than traditional low-density suburbs because both land and construction costs are higher in dense areas.

Under Secretary Carson, HUD appears to be turning away from the New Urbanist view. But more work must be done: the administration must repeal the affirmatively furthering fair housing rule and appoint people to top HUD positions who are more sympathetic to the rights of suburbanites to live in low-density neighborhoods.

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About The Antiplanner

The Antiplanner is a forester and economist with more than fifty years of experience critiquing government land-use and transportation plans.

8 Responses to HUD Backs Off on Housing Mandate

  1. OFP2003 says:

    I think Dr Carson is THE Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. From the HUD website I saw lots of Deputy Secretaries and Assistant Deputy Secretaries….. but no “Under Secretaries”…..;-)

  2. albert says:

    The planning profession of today is built on a misunderstanding of Jane Jacobs. Ms. Jacobs presented Greenwich as an example of what naturally happens when cities are ALLOWED to develop organically. Ever since she obliterated the planning profession through her work 50 years ago, Planning schools shifted their efforts towards training an army of future bureaucrats, not to ALLOW Greenwiches to happen, but to MANDATE them. There’s a difference. A more appropriate view is Greenwich specifically, and New Urbanism broadly, is A solution, but not THE one-size-fits-all solution it is presented to be.

  3. prk166 says:


    Planning schools shifted their efforts towards training an army of future bureaucrats, not to ALLOW Greenwiches to happen, but to MANDATE them. There’s a difference. A more appropriate view is Greenwich specifically, and New Urbanism broadly, is A solution, but not THE one-size-fits-all solution it is presented to be.
    ” ~albert

    Well said.

  4. CapitalistRoader says:

    Undersecretary is a title, Under Secretary is not. The AP is describing how HUD is operating under Dr. Carson’s leadership.

  5. CapitalistRoader says:

    Oh, sorry, I didn’t see the little winking smiley face.

  6. OFP2003 says:

    Lots of vacant positions listed on the HUD website…. anyone want a political appointment in the Trump Administration????

  7. JOHN1000 says:

    Vacant positions is a positive. That is what Trump supporters (and anyone who wants better less-intrusive governing) want to see.

  8. LazyReader says:

    Jane Jacobs was never an example of organically developed urban areas. The median list price per square foot in Greenwich Village is $2,437, which is higher than the New York average of $891. Her advocacy helped to exacerbate the very high demand housing niches you see in every city whether it’s Fell’s Point, Little Italy in Baltimore, Greenwich in New York, Hyde Park, Chicago. Someone I know joked about this about what keeps housing prices stable and the idea is cleanliness. You don’t want it so clean and attractive and looked over that it attracts rich people to wanna buy real estate there. But you don’t become so complacent it becomes a crime infested ghetto. Thomas Jefferson taught Americans to have contempt for cities. Jane Jacobs reminded Americans that despite our disdain for cities, they are built and organized primarily for people, and no matter how hard we try to get away from them, they inevitably draw us back. If we are to survive long as a civilization, investment in our cities is essential…but the cities mustn’t be simply stacked file cabinets for human habitation, they must be living enterprises with sustainable infrastructure and New York is no longer that. It’s a collective; a tourist attraction, a half assed or rusting infrastructure boondoggle.

    Yes there is a market for the dense cosmopolitan living. However not all comprise the upper echelon of income. So enough people encroach or want the urban life, the demand raises prices. Of course ultimately if urbanophiles wanna live there it results in the dreaded highrise construction. For years Brooklyn was always seen as the alternative to Manhattans over crowded and wealth oriented living accommodations where a MCDonalds large fries costs 2 bucks. But in recent years some signs are booming that show a host of large skyscrapers are or will be going up in Brooklyn. Much to the disapproval to the Burroughs generational residents who see this as nothing more than a land grab opportunity to make billions and for the government to rake in hundreds of millions in new property taxes by sweeping away old apartments and putting up highrises (while not as tall as Manhattan’s, still stick out of the landscape like glass spikes).
    Greenwich Village is what it is but replicating brick by brick elsewhere is possible but the history is not something you can replicate. Cultural attitudes and personal history are the reason we have famous neighborhoods. But history cannot be transplanted, only mimicked.
    http://www.businessinsider.com/cities-china-ripped-off-from-the-rest-of-the-world-2015-7

    I’m from Baltimore and I admit I’m not eager to see these new towers prop up in the city. We don’t need more high rises. Just like how the Antiplanner stated most transit use in America is relegated to a few cities; People don’t realize the skyscraper is becoming obsolete except in just a few cities. They’re not built to accommodate the differential boom and bust cycle of traditional real estate. Historically their preferred use as office space is being beat out by satellite offices branched out to various locations. The Industrial Revolution made Skyscrapers possible, the Digital Revolution is making them unnecessary. This is best summed up in places like Dubai where highrise construction has broke record pace, I’ve seen them many of them are virtually empty. What do you expect when the heat where it costs as much as 1,000 a month just to air condition your condo and they’ve saturated the market with too many highrises. Burj Khalifa is half empty. rents in the Burj Khalifa plummeted 40% some ten months after its opening. Out of 900 apartments in the tower, 825 were still empty at that time. China is building whole cities for a populace that cant afford them, cause a third of their economy is state sponsored construction which is ridiculous even thou China has a billion people their population density was never high, prior to 2000 they were still very rural people. All this construction is resource use for resource use sake and that’s gonna come back to bite them given all this construction. In just ten years the buildings they’re so proud of are falling apart. For thousands of years the pyramids at Giza, Egypt were the tallest man made structure in the world; So I guess the Middle east is building glittering highrises to recapture that glory and to hopefully attract people to reassure them not to fear the hazards of radical Islam. And China is doing it cause to not to means sending millions of Chinese either back to the collectivist farms or the Nike factories.
    Moral indignation is jealously with a halo. Good luck to them.

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