,Housing Affordability: Smart Growth Abuses Are Creating a "Rent Belt" of High-Cost Areas

Housing Affordability: Smart Growth Abuses Are Creating a "Rent Belt" of High-Cost Areas


 

Publication Date: January 2007

Publisher: Heritage Foundation (Washington, D.C.)

Author(s): Wendell Cox; Ronald D. Utt

Research Area: Social conditions

Keywords: Smart growth; Affordable housing; households

Type: Report

Coverage: United States

Abstract:

Housing affordability problems are concentrated in regions where anti-growth land-use regulations have limited the supply of building lots. High-cost housing encourages business and households to move elsewhere and undermines the regional economy. The solution is to attack the root cause of the affordability problem (restrictive land-use regulations) and increase the supply of building lots.