Deed Men Walkin’

Part 3 of X

But it appears to have been “the suburbs”
that elected Joe Biden, in spite of the fact
that he referred to all single-family zoning
districts as “exclusionary zoning,” openly
embraced Obama’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Program and is presently
putting into effect conditioning HUD
grants, and probably federal transportation
and highway funds, on municipalities’
completely eliminating R-1 districts. See
Andy Sullivan, Jarrett Renshaw, “Biden
Seeks to Ease Housing Shortage with $5
Billion ‘Carrot, No Stick’ Approach”
Reuters Business News, (April 8, 2021),
and “Joe Biden’s Plan to Abolish the
Suburbs,”(https://www.powerlineblog.com
/archives/2020/06/joe-bidens-plan-toabolish-the-suburbs.php).
Very recently, defenders of the universally
maligned R-1 districts are starting to peep
out of the trenches: See “Opinion: Seattle
Times Editorial Board: Legislature should
reject plan to upend single-family zoning”
(The Wenatchee World, Jan. 27, 2022). But
in general, residents of the residential zoning
districts do not seem to have had the stomach to mount any significant opposition to
the elimination of single-family zoning.
Lessee Come Home!
Only two decades or so ago, President
Bill Clinton tweaked the Community
Reinvestment Act to incentivize banks to
make home loans and issue mortgages in
less wealthy areas. And in 2003, President
George W. Bush touted the American
Dream Down Payment Assistance Act,
42 U.S.C. 12821, designed to pay closing
costs and subsidize down-payments for
low-income buyers. (Whether or not these
efforts started the subprime mortgage
crisis, it is certain that the 2008 meltdown
finished these policies.) Presidents Clinton
and Bush seemed to take for granted, as
maybe we all did, that home ownership
was the “American dream,” and that the
only reason all Americans did not behave
like responsible homeowners was that they
didn’t all own homes.
Back then, individual home ownership was
the solution; presently, it is often seen as
the problem. But we are still in the grip of
legislative ambivalence about “the American dream” of home ownership. Democratic Congressmen Meeks, Green and
Congresswoman Beatty reintroduced a revised version of the American Dream
Down Payment Act in February 2021, providing for tax free savings accounts wherein
people could save toward a home down
payment. Congressman Green actually
mentioned “a yard and picket fence”! That
sounds quintessentially suburban.
But back to the future: Zoning ordinances
will be dismantled, trampled by local governments in a rush to secure federal money.
Realtors and developers will be lobbying
and litigating for these changes, just as it
was developers who led the charge to eliminate large-lot residential zoning. Remember Pennsylvania’s first “exclusionary
zoning” salvo: National Land Investment
Co. v. Easttown Township Board of Adjustment, 419 Pa 504, 215 A.2d 597 (1965).
See “Anti-Exclusionary Zoning in Pennsylvania: A Weapon for Developers, a Loss
for Low-Income Pennsylvanians,” Katrin
Rowan, 80 Temp. L. Rev.1271 (2007).
“The suburbs” are sandwiched in between
urban and rural areas, set up to provide the
advantages of each and minimize their disadvantages. Elimination of single-family
zoning districts in cities is well underway.
The city of Minneapolis has done so, and other metropolitan areas are considering it.
In our commonwealth, Pittsburgh recently
made permanent an interim “inclusionary”
zoning measure requiring that “affordable
housing” be included in new projects with
at least 20 units in the Lawrenceville area
of the city. Renting and buying those units
will be open only to people with incomes
below a certain threshold, and the rents
and prices of these “affordable” units will
remain controlled for a period of 35 years.
See Mark Belko, “A moment ‘to be bold,’ ”
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 7, 2021).
Philadelphia has so far declined to follow
Minneapolis, saying that the city does not
have a housing shortage and that home
ownership among low-income and racial
minority populations is comparatively
high. Jake Blumgart, “Three reasons why
Philadelphia won’t follow Minneapolis’s
ban on single family zoning,” Plan Philly,
Jan. 4, 2019.
And what about the other end of the
spectrum, the countryside? I think of this
every week as I drive through Monroe,
Northampton, Schuylkill and Carbon
counties, past freeholds of several acres,
with dwellings and outbuildings in various
stages of reconstruction or deconstruction,
and displaying evidence of intergenerational habitation, each flying an American
flag, often two. Oregon has become the
first state to abolish single-family zoning
statewide, which means that, as dwellings
age or are sold, they will be replaced by
multi-family or mixed-use construction. If
such legislation goes nationwide, will my
compatriots, the rural homeowners, eventually be forced onto the collective reservations? The formerly Communist regimes of
eastern Europe provide fascinating studies
of the speed with which this can be accomplished, and of the complexity and chaos of
restoring land to single-family ownership.
But that’s beyond the scope of this article.