It’s Herbert Hoover’s fault. In the early 1920s, as a reform-minded secretary of commerce, Hoover wanted to bring order to America’s chaotic cities and towns, where a lack of controls on land use allowed grimy factories, livery stables and the like to spring up in residential neighborhoods. He convened a committee that drafted a model act encouraging state governments to authorize local governments to do something new: zoning.

Hoover’s brainchild soon became a plague whose effects continue to be felt today. Local governments figured out that they could use zoning to achieve racial segregation. Suburbs adopted exclusionary zoning that prohibited the building of the least costly forms of housing, not just to keep out racial minorities, but also to boost local housing values and save on the costs of educating poor children. Localities lack incentives to take into account the impact of their policies on people who live elsewhere. Growth in the most economically vibrant regions, such as Silicon Valley, is constrained by a lack of housing for employees. People end up trapped in places with more affordable housing but no work.

This tale is well told by Robert Ellickson, a professor emeritus at Yale Law School, in his book “America’s Frozen Neighborhoods: The Abuse of Zoning.” It’s a valuable contribution to the growing movement against NIMBYism: “Not in My Backyard.” Although the book came out last year, I just got around to reading it, and I learned a lot, not just about Herbert Hoover.

Ellickson isn’t against all zoning. He supports the preservation of open spaces and historic buildings, within reason, as well as keeping noxious activities away from homes. But it has gone too far.

The most important word in the book is “frozen.” Ellickson quotes from the 1992 edition of Jane Jacobs’s book, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities”: “The purpose of zoning … should not be to freeze conditions and uses as they stand. That would be death.”

Yet that’s what has happened, Ellickson writes. Once a neighborhood is zoned for single-family detached homes, it almost always stays that way, even when a city’s growth makes such low density inefficient. Los Angeles permits the building of only detached houses on 75 percent of its residentially zoned land; Chicago, 79 percent. First, those detached houses are built to last. Second, “the politics of local zoning almost invariably works to freeze land uses, especially in a neighborhood of detached houses,” he writes. “This is a significant finding, not yet part of urban lore. I chose the title of the book to emphasize it.”

It doesn’t have to be this way. France, “hardly a nation averse to regulation,” in 2014 prohibited its municipalities from setting minimum lot sizes for houses, Ellickson writes. Within the United States, he approvingly cites land-use rules in Texas, focusing on the northwestern portion of the capital, Austin. It matches up well with the other two places he analyzes: Silicon Valley and the environs of New Haven, Conn., the home of his university, Yale. Home prices aren’t as high in greater New Haven as in Silicon Valley, but that’s because job growth is weaker; zoning restrictions there are even tighter than they are in Silicon Valley, he writes.

Austin is a blue splotch of liberalism in a mostly red state. But Ellickson writes that being pro- or anti-zoning doesn’t line up neatly with political preference. Some liberals oppose increased housing density because they feel development harms the environment, or don’t want to reward “greedy” landlords. Others favor it because it lowers housing costs for the poor. And so on. (Read David Brooks’s Thursday column for more on the politics.)

People who choose to stay in Austin or move to the city are probably more likely than someone in a New Haven suburb to buy into the idea that higher density in cities is good, Ellickson writes. There are also institutional factors. In Texas, a central city can veto the incorporation of a nearby suburb. That prevents unincorporated areas from forming new cities with restrictive zoning, which happened in Silicon Valley. And school district boundaries don’t follow city lines, so loosening zoning doesn’t automatically raise costs by causing an influx of low-income students to the schools.

Ellickson praises the Biden administration for trying to weaken exclusionary zoning. This week, the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced $98 million in grants to jurisdictions that remove barriers to affordable housing developments. It’s also offering $10 million to support local planning efforts. Ellickson also cites the Harvard economist Edward Glaeser, who has suggested that the federal government could tie highway grants to the level of housing construction in high-demand areas.

But Ellickson argues that given the U.S. tradition of strong states’ rights, the states will have to play a bigger role than the federal government in breaking down local zoning restrictions. Most states have the power to pre-empt local zoning laws, he notes.

Ellickson cites economic research by a variety of scholars, including The Times’s own Paul Krugman, showing that bigger cities are more productive. Even apart from fairness considerations, that alone is a strong argument for breaking down exclusionary zoning that suppresses growth.

“States should correct Hoover’s error,” Ellickson concludes. “Leviathan can do mischief at city hall. Excessive home rule has damaged the nation.”

The Readers Write

You wrote about working from home. I have been a remote technical project manager for 20 years. My projects have always been delivered on time, on schedule and within budget, so I know it is possible to be successful working from home. Working remotely allows me to concentrate without worrying about office politics, gossiping, taking credit for others’ work, making up for slackers or people randomly coming to my cubicle to chat.

Karen Massie
Phoenix

When layoffs happen, it is going to be the people the manager doesn’t know who get cut. It is going to be the ones he or she knows who get the promotions. A major function in my last job was mentoring young architects and engineers, something almost impossible to do if they are home.

Enoch Lipson
Woodside, N.Y.

I am forever amazed/amused at our collective concerns about “recession,” which you discussed this week. It’s a phenomenon that is somewhat arbitrarily defined and usually only identified well after the fact, yet we spend endless hours (and lines of text) worrying about whether we’re in one or whether one is about to begin. And why? If the captains of industry had a crystal ball that told them “yes — we’re now in a recession,” would they make different decisions than they would if they just recognized that the economy is slowing down?

Gary Ragatz
East Lansing, Mich.

Why do you assume that people are not borrowing because they don’t want to? If the Fed stops its foolhardy practice of raising interest rates with no thought of the consequences, and if instead they start to lower rates, borrowers will flock to the opportunity. People are waiting because they are betting/hoping that rates will fall. If that happens, the banks will have more business than they can handle.

Chris Thaiss
Reston, Va.

Quote of the Day

“Fed officials are ordinary people who control increasingly potent tools.”

— Jeanna Smialek, “Limitless: The Federal Reserve Takes on a New Age of Crisis” (2023)