Friday, May 06, 2011

Low Density Zoning Hurts Poor People (By Design)

This comes out of a twitter conversation, but aside from all of the other reasons I'm against all of the various ways in which zoning regulations reduce population density, they're also used to exclude poor people from certain school districts. Large lot zoning and lack of multifamily dwellings make housing too expensive for poor people by increasing the minimum amount of land and housing poor people must buy in order to buy into a school district. And, yes, this is deliberate. Schools are largely financed through property taxes, and if you let some moochers buy a too small house in your neighborhood than they're going to be paying less for access to that school.