How Popular is Zoning Reform, Actually?
A few weeks ago, Phil Lowe, the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, claimed that the reason Australia has a high cost of land, and therefore housing, was:
“…because of the choices we've made: the choices we've made about taxation; the choices we've made about zoning and urban design; the fact that most of us have chosen to live in fantastic cities on the coast; the fact that, when we choose to live in these fantastic cities on the coast, we want a block of land, we don't want to live in high density; and we've chosen, as a society, to underinvest in transport.”
While I largely agree with the sentiment of Lowe’s statement, something about the phrasing sat wrong with me. Does the public actually support the status quo, or is there a disconnect between the public and policy settings? Has Australia, and developed countries in general for that matter, really “chosen” to have restrictive zoning and a lack of high-density housing?
So, I decided to dig into the empirical evidence on how people feel about zoning reform, and see how popular it was, actually.
The best way to do this is to look at representative opinion polling - but to get an accurate view of public opinion, we need to be intelligent about how we interrogate it. Where possible, we should take the average of many polls - individual polls may be prone to sampling error or be influenced by whatever was in the news that week (as frequently occurs with gun control in the United States, for example).
And - as you’ll see below - we need to be careful about question wording as it can meaningfully bias an individual’s response. Some surveys ask about zoning reform as a general concept, while others ask about a specific proposed reform. Some polls also have leading questions (the one below is particularly egregious). Links to all the polls I’ve looked at are at the bottom of the page - feel free to check how questions were phrased or dig further into crosstabs.
Polls are also not undertaken randomly. Some are nationally representative, but most have been asked in areas considering zoning reform. These areas probably have an above-average opinion of zoning reform - so we need to be careful extrapolating results from Seattle to New York, for example.
Finally, (good) polls report respondents who are uncertain or express no preference. So, for ease of comparison across polls, I’ll often report the “net approval”: the proportion of respondents approving of zoning reform minus those against. (We can boil this down to one number: +1 means that approval was 1 percentage point higher than disapproval, while -1 means the opposite was true.)
Zoning reform is surprisingly popular…
Some may find it surprising that most polls find that zoning reform is often popular. Jurisdictions that have undertaken or are actively undertaking zoning reform (such as Auckland or Seattle) also strongly approve of reform. This is encouraging - in the case of Auckland, for example, it suggests that the recent Unitary Plan hasn’t led to a backlash in public opinion. (I’m not an expert on Auckland local politics, but in both the 2016 and 2019 city elections just 10% of Councillors lost their seats as well, for what it’s worth).
I only found one poll of Australians, from 2017, which finds net support for changing “planning restrictions to increase supply of new houses” by 2 points (47% support, 45% against), and for “more homes being built in your local area” by 11 points (53% vs 42%). A 2015 poll in Canberra found 60% support for some increase in height and density, with 20% against. The Grattan Institute also highlights that residents of Sydney and Melbourne would prefer more townhouses and medium density throughout the city.
But, there’s a huge variance in survey outcomes across contexts, ranging from +44 in a 2022 poll in Wellington to -26 in a 2019 survey in the United States. Polls of the U.S. nationally alone range from +18 to -26.
Net approval of zoning reform
What explains this variance in survey outcomes? How can there be a 44-point spread in polling across the U.S. alone? Some of this is likely due to different samples, but as explained below, question wording matters a great deal.
… as long as it’s not in my backyard
As one may expect, when polling questions bring to the respondent’s attention that reforms would take place within their neighbourhood or local area, support drops significantly. A 2022 YouGov poll of Americans was the most extreme example that I could find - the poll first asked whether the respondent supported more of a type of housing in general and then how they felt about more in their local area. As expected, people were less charitable closer to home.
Support in the U.S. for more...
The poll with the lowest support for zoning reform that I found - a 2019 national poll of the U.S. - asked whether the respondent agreed with the following statement:
“I support zoning policies that make it possible for more dense housing units, such as multi-family homes, to be built near where I live.”
Only 27% supported, with 53% against. White and older respondents, in particular, were very unlikely to support zoning reform.
Although not asking specifically about zoning reform, a 2011 Productivity Commission Survey of Australians found similarly bad numbers, asking: ‘How would you feel about having more people living in your suburb or community and the increase in housing required for this?’ 51% were against, while only 12% were in support.
We can also see the dissonance between more housing in general and housing specifically within your neighbourhood in Auckland. The poll referenced above, finding +17 support for zoning reform, was in relation to broad policies which have already been implemented. A separate poll asking about “housing intensification in your neighbourhood” found that reforms were net unpopular by 2 points. Wellingtonians don’t care though; they appear to be the true YIMBYs: there was +44 support - the highest I found - for zoning reform when asked the exact same question.
Net approval of zoning reform when the question explicitly mentions "your neighbourhood"
Polling firm Data For Progress conducted an experiment last year touching on similar issues. The firm asked two groups of respondents how they felt about zoning reform. The first group was fed a leading statement that zoning reform would improve racial justice, while the second was told that zoning reform would help the economy. The firm found that messaging surrounding economic benefits were more persuasive, particularly to republicans. Net approval was +11 for the economy group but only +1 for the racial justice group.
Medium density is popular, high density is (mostly) unpopular.
Another key source of variance relates to whether reforms are sold as leading to high or medium density. I found four polls explicitly referencing townhouses, duplexes, triplexes, or low-rise apartments in their question-wording. Although one was highly leading, and another was only of democratic voters, these polls consistently reported the most robust support for zoning reform.
Net Approval of zoning reform to allow for medium density
Another 2022 YouGov Poll of Americans found 37% approval and 41% disapproval for “removing regulations and codes that prevent developers from constructing more housing”, but this dropped to 30-48 when the question specifically included the term “high-density”.
A 2015 survey commissioned by the Australian Capital Territory Government highlights this best, in my opinion. They asked how respondents felt about more of each type of housing - support deteriorated as housing got taller and denser. But few were against more townhouses or medium density generally.
So, broadly the polling suggests that:
Zoning reform is probably more popular than you think, particularly when sold as a broad, general reform, rather than specific to one neighbourhood.
People are favourable toward (or at least not actively opposed to) more medium density.
It should be no shock that the places that have successfully implemented zoning reform have pursued reforms consistent with these two facts.
Support for reform may also be growing over time - it would fit with the growing success and influence of the YIMBY movement. But, I would like another half-dozen polls to be sure; any ‘trend’ could just be noise with the current level of data.
There was another interesting thing I stumbled across while digging through poll numbers. One of the 2022 YouGov Polls found that Americans fundamentally misunderstand the environmental impacts of housing. Just 23% thought “it’s better for the environment if houses are built closer together” while 77% incorrectly suggested that “it’s better for the environment if houses are built farther apart”. Further education on the impacts of zoning reform will likely only make it more popular.
Why the disconnect between opinion and policy?
So, why is there such a strong disconnect between public opinion and policy? Why haven’t more governments at least tried zoning reform?
There are a few reasons for this. One is likely that governments do not understand housing economics. But another key factor is that local governments act in the interests of a select vocal minority rather than the values of the community at large.
Local councils and governments often have outsized power in setting housing policy, but their processes are highly undemocratic. A study out of Massachusetts found that just 15% of constituents who went to meetings on zoning and planning were pro-development, while 63% were in opposition. White residents and wealthier residents were also overrepresented. This makes intuitive sense: who are the people who have the time and energy to take hours out of their week to discuss these issues?
Likewise, local government elections are poorly attended. In the U.S. turnout ranges from 15 to 27%. In Australia, turnout is far lower in local elections than in State and Federal elections, and those that show up lean older. In Western Australia turnout was just 32% in 2021 - 36% of voters were over 65, while just 15% were under 34. This paper also shows that home ownership and age are highly correlated with turnout in Victoria. The result? Zoning reform is often unlikely to occur, and when it does, it is in areas with less political resistance, usually not where people want to live.
But - to some extent - even if we could improve engagement with local government processes, we still probably wouldn’t get enough reform. The polling highlights this: people are far less likely to support change when their community has to take on the burden. Local governments just aren’t designed to represent the community at large.
California and New Zealand have demonstrated a simple solution to this problem. For change to occur, state and federal governments need to override local councils and implement sweeping reform to allow for medium density, with no exemptions. If done right, it would make housing more affordable and probably would be quite popular.
Links to polls:
Australia (2017): https://dataverse.ada.edu.au/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.26193/EL5WHN
ACT (2015) https://www.planning.act.gov.au/urban-renewal/public-housing-renewal/about-the-program/winton-sustainable-research-survey
Vancouver (2020): https://researchco.ca/2020/11/20/vancouver-issues/
Sacramento (2021): https://sfyimby.com/2021/01/sacramento-city-council-votes-to-change-single-family-zoning.html
Seattle:
(2017): https://www.thestranger.com/news/2017/06/21/25230243/poll-finds-nearly-half-of-seattleites-support-changing-single-family-zoning
Wellington (2022): https://www.scribd.com/document/595172496/Wellington-Mayoral-Poll-September-2022-Q-A-Kantar-Public-Poll?secret_password=q1Q8OrGmKmVBiLHhQWqk
Auckland (2022): https://www.scribd.com/document/596492807/Auckland-Mayoral-Poll-September-2022-Q-A-Kantar-Public-Poll?secret_password=FSoeqbWvi0vsu571Qfwy
Montgomery County (2022): https://www.filesforprogress.org/datasets/2022/5/dfp_montgomery_county_md_dem_primary_may_tabs.pdf
United States:
(2019): https://www.redfin.com/news/high-density-housing-sentiment-by-race/
(2021): https://www.vox.com/22297328/affordable-housing-nimby-housing-prices-rising-poll-data-for-progress
(2022) https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/ivzp8gpnhp/crosstabs_Attitudes%20on%20Development%20and%20Zoning.pdf
(2022b) https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/6q613q9hp3/tabs_Housing_Policy_20220719.pdf
