Deed Man Walking

Home Sweet Home (2 of x)

Euclid has had a good long run, nearly a
century, as any reader who ever practiced
land use law can attest. But now, it is the
single-family “private house” that is more
likely to be looked on as the “mere parasite,” “The Zombie That is Single-Family
Zoning — Destroy It Before It Destroys
Us” screamed Forbes Real Estate Council,
(LeBlanc, May 4, 2021), and, they’re just
not cool: See Justin Fox, “Single-Family
Zoning is Weird,” Bloomberg Quint (Jan.
18, 2020).
Ironically, if this trend continues, the only
people allowed to live in “single-family”
detached dwellings will be people without
families: childless people over 55, since
discrimination on the basis of those criteria
is expressly permitted in “senior communities” under the federal Housing for Older
Persons Act (1995).
It isn’t only single-family residential zoning
that is coming under critical scrutiny; it’s
the core concept of zoning itself. See, e. g.,
“Land Use Regulation: What’s It Worth
Anyway?” (https://www.urban.org/debates/land-use-regulation-whats-it-worthanyway). It’s sad to think my treasured
(and expensively maintained) volumes of
Ryan’s Pennsylvania Zoning Law and Practice may soon be relegated to the back of
the stacks, no more relevant than dusty
treatises on enfeoffment and the fee tail.
The Way We Were
The single-family detached dwelling
district has, for a long time, been the
jewel in the crown of every municipality’s
zoning ordinance: R-1, the “highest” use
class category.
Time was, the residents of private houses in
residential districts could be relied upon to
zealously resist any incursions. When I first
began practicing zoning law, people within
a quarter mile away from some even
slightly denser proposed residential or
commercial use could be counted upon to
throng the zoning hearings, dressed as if for
church and filled with the gospel of property values. (I’m looking at you, Townships
Radnor and Lower Merion!) And to appear
as counsel for a developer before certain
zoning hearing boards (All hail, Lower
Gwynedd!) was to sit in the chair behind
the little imitation-wood nameplate engraved “Devil’s Advocate.”