What's Missing from the Upzoning Conversation?

By Andrew

As has now been widely reported, on the last day of the season’s legislative session, the Oregon State Senate passed House Bill 2001, a first-in-the-nation statewide package of regulatory measures that effectively bans zoning of single family housing in cities of over 10,000 in favor of “missing middle housing”—that is, everything between single family and high-rise apartments.  

Whether the bill will incentivize new affordable housing development, thus decreasing housing prices as more stock comes online—and simultaneously eliminating vestiges of racial and exclusionary economic segregation—remains to be seen. 

Lots of folks cite evidence in support of that idea. Recently, however,  two prominent economists argued that the notion that an insufficient supply of housing is a main cause of urban economic problems is based on a number of faulty premises. An analysis of zoning changes in Chicago came to similar conclusions about the effectiveness of increasing allowed densities as an affordability mechanism. It is worth noting that the latter has been critiqued. At the least, these papers should give us pause.

Despite the ambiguity of outputs and outcomes resulting from upzoning, as the regulatory practice is commonly known, the practice is in vogue. Cities from Minneapolis to Seattle are experimenting with regulatory loosening (and associated tactics including developer incentives).  Odd bedfellows have emerged. The NIMBYism v. YIMBism debate proceeds (and will only be made trickier by the Trump Administration's entrance into the conversation and the acceleration of the Democratic primary process). 

Stroper, an economist at UCLA and one of the authors of the paper cited above, argues “housing is an area where the law of unintended consequences is most powerful.” 

Given the deep and obvious connections between housing and education we have been surprised to find no serious conversation about the second-order effects of upzoning on schooling. 

For example, upzoning may lead directly to new public infrastructure needs, such as the need to provide new seats for new students. I have seen no public analysis or distillation of plans from Oregon or cities experimenting with upzoning to address the obvious and non-obvious impacts on education. Minneapolis’ 2040 plan, which many have lauded, makes no attempt to answer obvious questions:

• If upzoning increases neighborhood density, where is the funding coming from to support the associated new school seat needs?

• Is existing human capital infrastructure sufficient to handle new seat needs (do we have enough school leaders, teachers, and support staff)?

• What are the potential school funding impacts (e.g. flows of student-connected federal funding streams)?

• How might geographic shifts impact and intersect with local work on school integration?

• What happens to schools in neighborhoods that families are moving out of?

The three million plus Oregonians who will be impacted by 2001 should be clamoring for answers to these questions (and many more).

More affordable housing is noble and necessary. Zoning should certainly remain one of the tools that we utilize to increase affordability.  Yet, it seems absurd to pull this lever without attempting to understand the trickle-down impacts on our most valuable resource and best hope for the future: our children.