Overview

Opening up neighborhoods that offer greater opportunities for social mobility to low- and moderate-income households remains a challenge in the United States. Exclusionary zoning practices act as a barrier to current efforts by restricting the supply of affordable housing. Since the 1960s, a number of U.S. states have implemented fair share policies, yet little research has evaluated the impact of fair share on equity or on the wellbeing of program beneficiaries. In this paper, we examine whether approaches such as Massachusetts Chapter 40B, a fair share policy that seeks to bypass restrictive zoning practices, offer one potential solution.

Findings

  • Our biggest finding is that affordable 40B units are located in areas likely to foster upward social mobility and better health which other housing assistance programs have struggled to reach. Specifically, 40B enables the production of affordable units in neighborhoods that offer greater economic mobility, higher performing schools, greater social capital, less pollution, better health outcomes, and lower incarceration rates than both the typical neighborhood in Massachusetts and neighborhoods available to beneficiaries of the state's Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, Housing Choice Voucher, and public housing programs. The magnitude of the differences between neighborhoods with affordable 40B homes and neighborhoods with other housing program beneficiaries are strikingly large. Consistent with previous research on policies that have segregated affordable housing and opportunity, neighborhoods with affordable 40B units are whiter and more affluent than average.
  • An examination of underlying policy mechanisms suggests that 40B’s ability to bypass exclusionary zoning plays may explain why affordable 40B units reach these more privileged neighborhoods. Over half of affordable 40B units are located in areas that were previously zoned for single family residential uses with large minimum lot size requirements – a share that is two to three times larger than that of other housing assistance programs. Moreover, 40B systematically builds affordable housing in municipalities with very large minimum lot requirements (of roughly one to two acres per home).
  • 40B’s mechanism for bypassing zoning rules has raised concerns that municipalities and/or developers may respond by building housing in neighborhoods with undesirable features such as proximity to industrial zones or highways. However, we find little evidence to support most concerns that 40B’s zoning override leads to affordable 40B units being built in the least advantaged areas of municipalities, in polluted zones, or near highways, though a non-trivial share of units are located in industrial zones. Though we do not find evidence that these areas have higher levels of pollution, this pattern still raises concerns about the potential effects of industrial characteristics on beneficiaries' well-being.

Implications for Policy and Practice

  • By incentivizing an increase in the supply of affordable housing, our findings suggest that fair share policies like Chapter 40B could provide a key component of a policy response that could enable low- and middle-income families to access neighborhoods from which they have historically been excluded, suggesting that such policies may be valuable complements to other major housing programs in the United States.
  • A non-negligible portion of affordable 40B units are located in industrial zones and 40B does not contain provisions that incentivize certain neighborhoods over others. Though it is unclear whether this would have any negative impact on beneficiaries, policymakers considering similar policies may want to consider including neighborhood-level incentives that locate affordable housing in areas known to promote health and well-being.

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