How America’s Wealthiest Neighborhoods Use Zoning Laws to Lock Out Renters
Across American suburbs, local governments use zoning laws to require large lot sizes, limit apartment construction, and mandate excessive parking spaces—regulations that effectively price out renters and concentrate them in just a fraction of neighborhoods. These rules operate like an invisible fence around opportunity: families who rent cannot access the well-funded schools, job networks, and community resources that homeowners in these areas take for granted.
More than one-third of US neighborhoods maintain rental housing below 20 percent of all homes, creating what researchers call “rental deserts” where working families have virtually no housing options despite earning decent incomes.
In “Rental Deserts, Segregation, and Zoning,” Harvard researchers Whitney Airgood-Obrycki, Magda Maaoui, and Sophia Wedeen conducted a spatial analysis of how local land use regulations shape access to rental housing across America’s 100 largest metropolitan areas.
Key Takeaways:
- Zoning rules are associated with reduced rental access: Communities requiring large minimum lot sizes see rental shares drop by up to 7.8 percentage points. In comparison, strict density limits can eliminate up to 20.8 percentage points of potential rental housing.
- Rental exclusion reinforces segregation: 35.1 percent of neighborhoods qualify as rental deserts. These areas remain 75 percent white compared to 33 percent white in high-rental neighborhoods.
- Geographic segregation intensifies economic inequality: Metropolitan areas with the most uneven rental housing distribution also show moderate levels of association with higher racial segregation and income segregation across neighborhoods.
Researchers analyzed American Community Survey data covering 84,000 census tracts nationwide, comparing housing patterns across rental deserts (less than 20% rental), mixed-tenure areas (20-80% rental), and high-rental neighborhoods (more than 80% rental). They used an index to measure how unevenly rental housing spreads within metro areas, then correlated this spatial pattern with municipal zoning restrictions from the National Zoning and Land Use Database covering 36,851 census tracts. This approach allows them to directly link specific zoning policies to measurable differences in rental housing availability.
Regulatory barriers drive exclusion. The most restrictive communities—those requiring minimum lot sizes of two acres or more—reduce neighborhood rental shares by 7.8 percentage points compared to areas with minimal restrictions. Density limits prove even more powerful: areas allowing only 0-4 units per acre show rental shares 20.8 percentage points lower than communities permitting 31+ units per acre. These regulations make it financially impossible to build small, affordable housing units, forcing developers to construct only large, expensive homes that price out lower-income families.
Zoning rules geographically concentrate rental homes. Rental deserts cluster overwhelmingly in suburbs. Despite representing 55 percent of all neighborhoods, suburbs contain 68 percent of rental deserts, while urban areas hold just 9 percent. Single-unit detached homes dominate these areas at 85 percent of the housing stock compared to 17 percent in rental-rich neighborhoods. This sorting mechanism operates similarly to economic redlining: families who cannot afford homeownership are excluded from suburban communities with better schools and job access, regardless of their income level or creditworthiness.
Spatial segregation is strongly associated with income and racial segregation. The spatial concentration of rental housing is associated with broader patterns of segregation across metropolitan areas. Cities like Dallas, Houston, and New York rank in the top quartile for housing, racial, and income segregation simultaneously, while 22 metros show high segregation across all three measures. When zoning rules limit where renters can live, they also determine where communities of color and working families can access quality schools, healthcare, and employment opportunities.
The research shows that municipalities allowing greater building heights and more apartments have significantly higher shares of rental housing. Creating integrated communities will require additional measures beyond zoning reform, including building more homes at lower price points, increasing access to homeownership, and expanding housing subsidies.
Photo by U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) from USA, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons