Local Government Institutions and Housing Politics in the United States

This dissertation considers the institutions of municipal governments in the United States that constrain housing construction. Housing has become less and less affordable to American families as rental and home prices have risen in recent decades. The primary cause of increasing prices is a shortage of new homes being built in growing cities. I argue that this shortage of new homes is partially due to institutions of local governments across the country that make it difficult, and often impossible, to built new housing. This dissertation examines three of these institutions, zoning, public meetings, and elections, and shows the interaction of unequal participation by anti-development residents and institutions designed to prevent and delay new housing from being built. Chapter 1 examines the institution of exclusionary zoning, showing that the prevalence of laws banning new affordable, multi-family housing can be attributed to a backlash against rising racial diversity. Exploiting differences in Black population growth in Northern cities from the Second Great Migration of 1940-1970, I show that the median large city would have zoned nearly a quarter of residential land more for multi-family housing absent Black population growth. I argue that exclusionary zoning emerged as a tool of racial exclusion during a crucial period when de jure segregation was becoming impossible to maintain. White residents of central cities became more conservative in response to the Great Migration and and to satisfy their demands, cities enacted zoning codes that approximated racial segregation through economic segregation. Chapter 2 examines the contemporary politics of housing development in a large American city, looking at how political participation interacts with the institutions designed be responsive to community concerns over development. Using two decades of meeting minutes from the San Francisco Planning Commission, comprising over 30,000 public comments, I look at who participates in this form of politics and whether they are able to effect the outcome of public policy. I find that commenters are unrepresentative, by age, race, and homeownership status, of the population at large and more unrepresentative than regular voters. Commenters also are unrepresentative geographically since they are driven to turn out and oppose projects by proximity. This provides evidence that the ``not-in-my-backyard" effect not just reduces support for policies but also makes people more likely to act to oppose them. Finally, I show that comments are correlated with the likelihood of a project approval--comments in support and opposition are similarly effective in increasing or decreasing the chances of approval. Chapter 3 examines the constraining effects of elections in the politics of housing development and how politicians may avoid accountability by exploiting voter myopia. Looking at decades of housing permits paired with election returns from hundreds of cities across the United States, I find evidence of a `permitting cycle' around elections. In cities where mayors who are running for reelection, less new housing is permitted in the months leading up to the election. The size of this cycle increases with the share of homeowners in the city, indicating that the anti-development preferences of voters constrain re-election seeking politicians from pursuing policy. The studies of contemporary politics around housing development show the difficulty of dislodging the policy regime put into place around the time of the Great Migration. Entrenched inequalities perpetuate themselves through unequal participation in future political fights and institutions designed to make altering the status quo very difficult.

Advisor: Lenz, Gabriel