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Full-Text Articles in Law
Zoning By A Thousand Cuts, Sara C. Bronin
Zoning By A Thousand Cuts, Sara C. Bronin
Pepperdine Law Review
Zoning is increasingly viewed as a constraint on the nation’s housing supply, and as zoning enters its second century, there is a strong drumbeat for reform. Across the country, reformers have targeted the elimination of single-family zoning, pointing to research showing that single-family zoning drives up development costs, degrades the environment, and homogenizes communities. While allowing more multi-family options could help address these issues, reformers should not exclusively focus on the elimination of single-family zoning. Process requirements including mandatory public hearings, and substantive requirements involving lot configuration, building size, and occupancy, among other things, play a significant role in determining …
Measuring Local Policy To Advance Fair Housing And Climate Goals Through A Comprehensive Assessment Of Land Use Entitlements, Moira O'Neill, Eric Biber, Nicholas J. Marantz
Measuring Local Policy To Advance Fair Housing And Climate Goals Through A Comprehensive Assessment Of Land Use Entitlements, Moira O'Neill, Eric Biber, Nicholas J. Marantz
Pepperdine Law Review
California’s legislature has passed several laws that intervene in local land-use regulation in order to increase desperately needed housing production—particularly affordable housing production. Some of these new laws expand local reporting requirements concerning zoning and planning laws, and the application of those laws apply to proposed housing development. This emphasis on measurement requires the state to develop a housing data strategy to support both enforcement of existing law and effective policymaking in the future. Our Comprehensive Assessment of Land Use Entitlements Study (CALES) predates, but aligns with and supports, this state-led effort to improve local reporting. For the cities that …
Variances: A Canary In The Coal Mine For Zoning Reform?, John J. Infranca, Ronnie M. Farr
Variances: A Canary In The Coal Mine For Zoning Reform?, John J. Infranca, Ronnie M. Farr
Pepperdine Law Review
There is perhaps no area of land use law where practice departs more from legal doctrine than the realm of zoning variances. According to the legal doctrine, variances are to be granted sparingly, providing a “safety valve” that alleviates unique hardships encountered by a property owner. In practice, variances are granted at high rates—often around ninety percent of applications are approved—and, in some jurisdictions, in high volumes. In such cases, variances effectively serve as a rezoning, enabling jurisdictions to permit otherwise prohibited uses and allow growth and development to occur without addressing needed zoning reforms. By allowing neighbors the opportunity …
Growth ≠ Density: Zoning Deregulation And The Enduring Problem Of Sprawl, Christopher Serkin, Kelsea Best
Growth ≠ Density: Zoning Deregulation And The Enduring Problem Of Sprawl, Christopher Serkin, Kelsea Best
Pepperdine Law Review
According to its many critics, zoning bears significant responsibility for the housing crisis in America and for promoting unsustainable development patterns. Reformers argue that zoning reduces the supply of new housing and therefore drives up prices in thriving communities. Zoning also increases carbon emissions by restricting density in the urban core and promoting carbon-intensive, land-consuming, automobile-dependent sprawl in single-family suburbs. A growing chorus calls for relaxing zoning limits in order to promote growth in the urban core as a response to the twin crises of housing costs and climate change. Relaxing zoning limits will almost certainly promote growth but may …