I’ve joined The Michigan Daily as an Opinion Columnist. My first column is titled "Why stop at ending single-family zoning? End all zoning in Ann Arbor," in response to "End single-family zoning in Ann Arbor," an earlier article in the Daily.
You might be able to guess what I will be writing about, but here’s my byline:
Abdulrahman Ateya is an Opinion Columnist writing about urban issues in Ann Arbor. He can be reached at ateya@umich.edu.
I’m excited! I will likely still write things to Managed Clutter, and I will share my columns to here. Otherwise, please read it on the Daily website!
Bonus content
I wrote this article as a response to Lydia Storella’s "End single-family zoning in Ann Arbor," a fantastic article that lays out the very valid argument for eliminating single-family zoning. I explain in my piece that I agree, and here I will state there is likely a moral imperative to eliminate single-family zoning. Single-family zoning has a racist history, and continues to impose itself to segregate economically and racially. There is a myriad of research (I’ve only linked two pieces) on the ills of single-family zoning, and very good reason to abolish the practice.
Unfortunately, as I explain in the article, the elimination of single-family zoning is unlikely to have significant effects beyond a symbolic deposition of a century long practice.
I cite the example of the tiny effects of R1 elimination in Minneapolis, and mention the relative non-productivity of California Senate Bill 9, which “ended” single-family zoning in California.
What I did not mention is Portland. Portland also eliminated single-family zoning. After a seven year process, Portland’s city council passed the Residential Infill Project, which in theory allows a four-plex on any lot. But what Portland soon found was that their reforms weren’t working, only building 100 units in the first year. In 2019, the state of Oregon mandated larger cities to develop working regulations to permit missing middle housing through HB 2001, and Portland understood it was not yet in full compliance. HB 2001 forces cities to gain compliance under threat of replacement of their local zoning code with a model code devised by the state. Portland came up with the Residential Infill Project 2 (RIP2), a series of tweaks to regulations to permit “cottage clusters,” which are groups of four or more homes with a shared common space, and attached houses.
What RIP2 does is make it clear that simply up-zoning, on its face, is not enough. There’s a lot of other rules that make the necessary construction of housing much more difficult.
Zoning is pretty racist
I recently heard a fascinating quote, shared by Dr. Jonathan Levine, planning professor at the University of Michigan. The lower court in Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty, the case that led the Supreme Court to clearly legalize zoning, stated the following:
the true object of the ordinance in question is to place all the property in an undeveloped area of 16 square miles in a strait-jacket […] the result to be accomplished is to classify the population and segregate them according to their income or situation in life.
The judge here was relying on the 1918 decision of Buchanan v. Warley, which held that racial zoning was unconstitutional under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The judge did not feel like it was wrong that the zoning code was intended to segregate, adding the following. Rather, he had no choice but to follow the already set precedent from Supreme Court decisions from before.
The blighting of property values and the congesting of population, whenever the colored or certain foreign races invade a residential section, are so well known as to be within the judicial cognizance.
These judges were pretty transparent in how they felt. Eventually, as Justice Sutherland realized in the final Euclid decision, they discovered they could achieve their goals through race-neutral policies. From my column:
Justice George Sutherland, authoring the 6-3 majority opinion in Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Company, the Supreme Court opinion that legalized zoning, writes that “the apartment house is a mere parasite.”
Instead of wasting their time with things that were clearly illegal, they could simply use other tools that achieve the same results in a more obscured fashion.
New York’s zoning policies recognized this phenomenon early on. The 1916 Zoning Ordinance, famous for creating the tiered towers the city is now famous for, was lobbied for by the Fifth Avenue Association of merchants, formed in 1907. Commonly attributed to a fear of encroaching factories from the bustling nearby Garment District, putting the blame on factories explains only half the story.
With the Garment District came the Garment District factory workers. These workers, many of whom were Jewish and other kinds of “undesirable” races, were the exact opposite of what posh Fifth Avenue merchants wanted. These immigrant workers filled the streets, and in the eyes of FAA leadership, did not contribute to the beautiful shopping environment they desired.
Joel Schwartz, history professor at Montclair College, explains this in his 1993 book, “The New York Approach.” He writes that Fifth Avenue Association investigators found a “swarm” of “‘Hebrews’” during lunchtime, coming in from nearby (manufacturing) lofts.
The Fifth Avenue Association’s lobby for zoning wasn’t a commendable act of city beautification – it was a clear motion to keep immigrant workers far and away from a section of they city they wanted to keep exclusive.