The Case for Ending Apartment Bans Data For Progress

Laura Loe Bernstein (@sharethecities) and Henry Kraemer (@HenryKraemer)

Theres a stubborn disagreement right now over the roots of Americas housing crisis, and whether runaway rents can be eased by ending apartment bans. We can all see that rising rents have far outpaced wages, just one of the many ways crony capitalism squeezes the working class, poor folks, communities of color, and the shrinking middle class. Millions of Americans need the housing crisis to end, and for the United States to establish housing as a human right. This crisis was born of a willful, elite effort to exclude the masses from decent neighborhoods by banning the apartments we can afford. The crisis cannot end without undoing that sin.

We need a Housing Guarantee in this country, to ensure that everybody has a home they can afford, and can rest easy knowing they will never be priced out of it. That means:

Robust social housing options accessible to all people.

The ability for people to choose to opt-out of our broken for-profit housing systems and into a federally supported system that favors limited equity co-ops, community land trusts, and a massive investment in public social housing yet unseen in the United States (but common in Europe).

Year-to-year rent stabilization and presumption of indefinite tenure to give renters peace of mind that their landlords wont spike their rents or no-cause evict them.

Cash assistance or solidarity funds to help people who need it to pay their rent.

Ending apartment bans to stop perpetuating the race and class separation that resulted from past land use wrongs.

Successfully enacting these first four priorities is nearly or entirely impossible if we do not end apartment bans. Also known as exclusionary zoning, apartment bans restrict new home-building to the sort of single-family houses most commonly associated with suburbs and affluent neighborhoods. Apartment bans are extraordinarily widespread, and render it illegal to build duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, and other spaces where multiple families can live nestled together (and often more cheaply) on the same plot of land. These bans have been central to the widespread disparities in access to the best parks, transit, scenic views and amenities, while consigning the lower classes to underfunded schools, environmental racism and generational wealth gaps.

Without a housing guarantee that opens the door to every neighborhood, we cannot build geographically equitable social housing, therefore new development will continue to segregate our communities by class and race.

Legalizing apartments in every community in the United States will not be enough. We need strong rental regulations to protect residents of these new apartments from exploitation and harm from their landlords. We need universally accessible public housing options to give renters the freedom to ditch their landlords if they want. But that starts with making space for apartments, especially in the neighborhoods wealthy property owners have long hoarded for themselves.

Without abolishing apartment bans we are left with very little space in growing cities to place social housing. Lets say we raise taxes on the rich as much as we dream, and set about to build social housing apartments. Right now, apartments market rate or not are illegal in much of the useable land in American cities (only 17% of Seattles buildable land allows apartments, for instance). Where will we put the new social housing if apartment bans remain? (And it will take years to build the social housing we need; in the meantime lets at least build some places for middle class and working class people to live.)

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The Case for Ending Apartment Bans Data For Progress