Monday of week 5 of the Utah legislative session, and Happy Valentine’s Day! Only one bill of relative interest out just before the weekend, not one of the biggies we are waiting for (how many times can I say that?). This one is HB379 – Association of Governments Amendments, which basically creates a vehicle to funnel the anticipated money for planning assistance and other things through the AOGs around the state. That’s it.
A couple of other interesting politics-related planning items that showed up in the news over the weekend. First, more on Utah Lake which is becoming more and more of a big deal. This may eventually frame how we approach regional issues in the future, so this one is worth continuing to watch. Next, we have some more about transportation for Little Cottonwood Canyon in the form of a legislative resolution sponsored by Sen. Jake Anderegg. Can I just say, for someone who started out in the legislature as pretty much a super-conservative anti-planning guy, as he’s gotten more and more involved in growth and planning issues, he has EVOLVED? Pretty much supports good planning now (amazing what a little exposure to the issues and trying to deal with them can do to someone…).
So while we’re waiting for those big planning bills, here’s something interesting. This is from a professor at the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies, Shane Phillips. To call it a study is not right, it’s more of a thought experiment (you know, like what Albert Einstein would do which led him to come up with the Theory of Relativity…), but it’s well thought-out and leads to some interesting ideas. Essentially what Prof. Phillips says is that communities, way back in the dark past, used to have land use regulations in place that allowed for lots of growth and development. The pace of growth was much slower than the potential might have allowed for, and as such there was no artificial market created that drove up land values. Since most communities switched to predominant restrictive single-family zoning, the availability of land for future growth has been much more limited which eventually has led to rapidly rising land values (because the market is constrained). He goes on to say that various ways to deal with this, like value capture through things like inclusionary zoning have some limited benefit but not really that much. The way to deal with it, he says, is to broadly rezone property in communities to allow for more density, and not just a little like three- and four-plexes, but for moderate three- and four-story buildings. The broad availability of such land will mean that no particular property owner can capitalize on his/her advantage and drive up land prices. It’s a cogent argument, but, as one who follows the politics of land use closely, I immediately thought, “right, good luck getting cities to broadly rezone like that,” and Prof. Phillips acknowledges that reality. What it also means, though, is that these big zoning reform efforts underway in various states and locations will likely not produce much reduction in the cost of housing because they’re just too limited. Here’s a couple of excerpts from his paper:
While ambitious, broad upzoning does have important selling points that could ease its adoption. For one, it benefits both market-rate and income-restricted housing developers, reducing costs and eliminating the perceived competition over available land between the two groups. Broad upzoning favors small-scale developers — the builders of “missing middle housing” who are more popular with the public than their larger, wealthier, more politically connected peers. Missing middle housing itself, such as courtyard apartments and three- and four-story apartment buildings, is also more welcome in many places than taller, denser developments. Renters and homebuyers across the housing market also benefit from broad upzoning, far outnumbering the windfall recipients and housing lottery winners who benefit from our current approach.
Finally, I must acknowledge the political challenge of broad upzones. This approach may be more effective at promoting affordability than the alternatives of windfall- and value capture-based zoning reforms, but its effectiveness is also its greatest political vulnerability.
It’s worth the read and some thought.