Part of President Biden’s proposed infrastructure bill, the American Jobs Plan, focuses on affordable housing. The $5 billion program is a competitive grant that awards funding to cities that relax zoning laws, like minimum lot sizes, mandatory parking requirements, and prohibitions on multifamily housing to encourage new housing construction. This program could help form a foundation for an effective affordable housing program.
Current state housing law requires that cities preemptively re-zone locations to accommodate potential new developments. Consequently, landowners may be motivated to build new residential housing units because their properties are now able to generate more income than under the prior zoning. When they can build multifamily housing on a lot, rather than just a single-family home, or shift from growing crops to producing condos, the landowner can make more money from the development. Often, the response of an affected neighborhoods is to then rally in opposition. Sometimes the new housing would then get built, and sometimes it does not.
However, what if the cities did not take the first step of rezoning, but instead, asked landowners/developers where the best areas would be to rezone for potential new residential development projects? Developers, more than city staff, can better identify ideal sites and conditions for future housing development. Thus, cities would ask the landowners/developers to propose potential sites for rezonings, whether changing the permitted use of the land, such as from a commercial use to residential, or increasing the housing density levels in existing residential neighborhoods.