Are Land Use Policies Mostly Hurting the Poor?

Writing in Market Urbanism, Emily Washington presents the findings of a paper she produced with Sand Ikeda on the "regressive effects of land use policy." Essentially, the paper finds that land use regulations increase the cost of property, creating what other researchers have dubbed a "zoning tax."

Policies that increase housing costs have a clear constituency in all homeowners, but they hurt renters and anyone who is hoping to move to an expensive city. The burden of land use regulations are borne disproportionately by low-income people who spend a larger proportion of their income on housing relative to higher income people.

In their paper, Ikeda and Washington present several options to reduce the burden on the poor, including a tax increment incentive designed to reduce NIMBY opposition to the creation of more housing. The tax increment local transfer, or TILT, as Washington describes it, would allow nearby homeowners to receive a portion of the additional property taxes generated from the improvement of nearby properties.