Category: zoning

There is a certain level of disbelief when learning about the blatant racism that has infiltrated and influenced housing policy in the United States. It seems unfathomable and too ludicrous to be true. Because it has been so aggressive and obvious, it is even harder to understand and therefore try and reconcile with. Upon reading People, Place and Opportunity by Jason Reece, something becomes increasingly clear; opportunity has a geographic footprint that is undeniable and quite visible. Access to just housing with quality schools, safety, transportation, nearby employment and access to fresh food are all under the umbrella of opportunity. The link need not be made more apparent.

There are many types of discrimination and segregation related to housing and access to housing that keeps low-income people of color in spaces where opportunity is extremely limited. The attempts to keep neighborhoods racially homogeneous has not only been a social movement, but it has affected policy and been a legal debate There is both overtly racist housing policy and policy that is seemingly non-discriminatory. One part of the discourse that has tried to keep neighborhoods exclusively white is exclusionary zoning. Exclusionary zoning is land use policy that desires to maintain and perpetuate segregation. For example, in attempts to ban multi-family development or minimize lot sizes, low-income people of color are essentially denied the opportunity to find affordable housing in the suburbs. These restrictions highlight the differences and affects of de jure segregation versus de facto segregation. De jure segregation is segregation ordained by law, while de facto segregation demonstrates the social reality of segregation and or discrimination in a certain location. For example, de jure segregation could be a restrictive covenant while de facto could be an elementary school with almost an exclusively black student body.

Exclusionary zoning is a modern day problem that is pervasive and prevalent; it is manifested in many different ways such as low-density zoning limits or fiscal zoning. In policy that dictates land use, there is an inherent inequality that influences geographic, social, economic and political opportunity.

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When I first heard the term exclusionary zoning I didn’t know its exact meaning however just from the term itself I knew it had something to do with forming an exclusive group or section by means of zoning. After some research, the simplest definition I came across defined exclusionary zoning as the limitation of residential development over large areas, and even entire cities or towns, to single-family housing on large lots.[1]In practice I believe that exclusionary zoning encompasses a number of policies and restrictions passed along with the creation of the Federal Housing Administration, which may include but should not be limited to zoning ordinances, and redlining. When the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) was created in 1930s, loans were specifically prohibited in integrated neighborhoods, and all during the New Deal, blacks were excluded from housing programs by means of zoning ordinances and redlining.[2] Zoning served as sort of a filtration system where land or space is divided for usage. Property is zoned into commercial, manufacturing, and residential uses, so a commercial building cannot be built in a residential or manufacturing neighborhood and vice versa, unless there is a change in zoning ordinances.[3] Below is a visual representation of what a zoning map for a section of South Bronx looks like. You can vividly see how in this specific section was zoned strictly for residential and manufacturing purposes.

New York City Department of City Planning – http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/pdf/zone/map6c.pdf

Redlining was another tool used for containment in hopes of reaching and maintaining a homogenous neighborhood.  More specifically redlining is defined as the practice of arbitrarily denying or limiting financial services to specific neighborhoods, generally because its residents are people of color or are poor.[4] Below is a visual of what redlining looked like in the city of Philadelphia.

Amy Hiller. 2002. "Redlining in Philadelphia," in Past Time, Past Place, edited by Anne Kelly Knowles, 2002, ESRI Press, Redlands, CA, ISBN: 1-58948-032-5

The sections colored in green are considered the best because the space is racially and ethnically homogeneous. The sections colored in yellow are considered to be declining due to infiltration of a lower grade population. The sections labeled in red are considered to be the worst neighborhoods with hazardous, low ownership rates, poor housing conditions and contain an undesirable population.

Throughout history these tactics have been implemented and can serve as the foundation to the segregated neighborhoods that exist now. Although I only discussed zoning ordinances and redlining its important to acknowledge that there were a plethora of policies implemented that contributed to the growing segregation of neighborhoods such as restrictive covenants, creation of neighborhood associations, and block busting.

Zoning is a common legal practice, exercised in America and other developed countries, implemented to control and appropriate land use on the grounds of certain regulations. Some guidelines specify government approved functions and utilizations of properties while others detail physical logistics pertaining to the building and maintenance of structures occupying particular land plots, such as dimensions and similar quantitative measures (Wikipedia). While zoning laws may appear relatively straightforward and even neutral on their face, a history of racial manipulation and long lasting segregation in America serves as a cautionary precursor to the uninformed or contextually removed citizen.

The facilitation and organization of suburban communities and urban societies within greater America was historically influenced and passionately fueled by a discriminatory wave of systematically categorizing neighborhoods on the basis of race, ethnicity, and class. Taking advantage of the racial panic over minority infiltration and competition that manifested as a nationwide white epidemic, realtors and other government actors installed both formal and informal housing policies and tactics including restrictive covenants, redlining, and blockbusting, to combat the integration of racial and ethnic minorities into predominantly white communities (Massey 36).  Exclusionary zoning emerged as an additional method of legal combat and in its earliest stages, took the form of strict regulations on low-density and age-restricted zoning, multi-family development projects, and smallest designated plot size (Reece 20) When combined, these strategies openly, methodically, and successfully restricted racial minorities access to fair housing up until exclusionary zoning practices were challenged by a landmark Supreme Court case, Euclid v. Ambler Realty, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, a product of the Civil Rights Movement (Wikipedia).

“Exclusionary Zoning.” Wikipedia. 16 Sept. 2012. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusionary_zoning

Massey, Douglas. American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1993.

Player, Lydia. Dealing with Government Red Tape. Digital image. North Dallas Homes. 17 Sept. 2012. http://lydiaplayer.blogspot.com/2009/01/dealing-with-government-red-tape.html

Reece, Jason. “People, Place and Opportunity: Mapping Communities of Opportunity in Connecticut.” Connecticut Fair Housing Center: 1-32.

According to the West Hartford Zoning, by Robert Whitten, zoning is when a town is divided into different sections, and each section serves a different purpose. In West Hartford, for example, the town is broken into residence districts, business districts, and industrial districts.  In the residence districts, Whitten explicitly writes “all business and industrial uses of property are prohibited” (Whitten 1924, 10).  The business district will be for stores, offices, theaters, and restaurants. And the last district, the industrial district, will be for manufacturing. Zoning is “essential to the securing of a measure of orderliness in the building of the city” and “is the direction of building development along orderly and well-considered lines of city growth” (Whitten 1924). Economically, “zoning means increased industrial efficiency and the prevention of enormous waste” (Whitten 1924). For the people, “zoning means better homes and an increase of health, comfort and happiness for all of the people” (Whitten 1924). In conclusion, zoning is a way the town can prevent chaos and limit and control exactly what happens in the town.

In the West Hartford Zoning of 1924, each district has sub-districts, which has certain regulations. For example, in the residence district, there are five sub-districts. All of the sub-districts are allotted a certain square foot for each home; if it is a single family home or two family home in sub-district A or B, they are given more square footage than the sub-district C, D, or E is given. Also, certain types of homes are not encouraged to be in built in certain sub-districts, such as a three family home in district A, B. or C because of the lot areas; sub-districts D and E have square footage regulates that are intended for three family homes (Whitten 1924). By doing this, the town is regulating who can live in what area, because three family homes will be cheaper to live in than a one family home. The districts are divided into who will be able to afford what, therefore, zoning and segregating incomes of families.

The residence district of West Hartford in 1924 is an example of exclusionary zoning. Exclusionary zoning is “steering in the residential markets” and creating “restrictions or bans on multi-family development, minimum lot sizes, age-restricted zoning, and low density zoning” (Reece 2009, 14, 20). In each sub-district of the residence district, there is allotted lot sizes such as the height of the buildings, the square footage, etc. There are requirements for each of these sub-districts, and by doing this, they are determining who will be able to live in what area.

Today, exclusionary zoning affects Connecticut. In West Hartford, for example, the exclusionary zoning still exists today. In this picture below, the different colors show the different districts present right now.

MAGIC 2012

The grey zones in West Hartford are the areas where most of the business/industry are located throughout the town. The purple zones, if I am understanding the codes correctly, show the residential multi-family homes. From my knowledge of West Hartford, the areas around business and industry are mainly multi-family homes, especially the streets off of Park Road, therefore my conclusion of the purple zoning being residential multi-family homes shall be accurate. By all of the multi-family homes being close to industry and businesses, this shows exclusionary zoning; multi-family homes are not spread out throughout the town, rather near industry and business, therefore the town is segregating by income levels. If the town was not participating in exclusionary zoning, multi-family dwellings would be across the town; however, this is not the case and the multi-family homes are in little chunks in surrounding shopping and retail centers, close to the Hartford line. This picture is an accurate showing of exclusionary zoning and how it reflects in a town.

SOURCES:

University of Connecticut Libraries Map and Geographic Information Center – MAGIC. (2012). Zoning Maps of West Hartford, Connecticut, 1924 to Present.. Retrieved from http://magic.lib.uconn.edu/otl/dualcontrol_zoning_westhartford.html.

Jason Reece, et al., People, Place, and Opportunity: Mapping Communities of Opportunity in Connecticut: A Report Commissioned By the Connecticut Fair Housing Center (Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, The Ohio State University, 2009), http://kirwaninstitute.osu.edu/connecticut-opportunity-mapping-initiative-results-and-resource-materials/.

Robert Harvey Whitten. West Hartford Zoning: Report to the Zoning Commission on the Zoning of West Hartford. West Hartford, Conn: Zoning Commission, 1924 (courtesy of the Connecticut State Library)

Exclusionary zoning is a way of preventing those who come from different economic incomes from living with each other.  When I think of exclusionary zoning, my first vision is the children’s book The Big Orange Splot by Daniel Manus Pinkwater.  Although this neighborhood does not have the wealth restrictions that exclusionary zoning has, it has the same root idea as exclusionary zoning: neighborhoods should all have the same type of housing—be it architecturally pleasing mansions with expansive, just groomed lots, or haphazardly constructed apartments—they should remain separate.  The neighborhood in the book has houses that have looked alike since the neighborhood began. This changes when a bird spilled orange paint on Mr. Plumbean’s house, spurring Mr. Plumbean into painting his house to resemble his dreams. This led to disagreement around the neighborhood over the altered state of his home.

Source: Daniel Manus Pinkwater, 1977

The Big Orange Splot takes a stand against conforming, because, at the end, Mr. Plumbean convinces his neighbors to follow his footsteps and paint their houses how they like them, instead of confining to the same as everyone else. ¹

With exclusionary zoning, there are more problems than Pinkwater’s children’s book includes—it isn’t just about being different.  Neighborhoods with exclusionary zoning can include laws that require not only single-family homes, but those that are a certain square footage and lot size.  This creates limited access for lower-class families that cannot afford to live in a luxury sized home.  On the surface, this just prevents a mixture of different types of housing in neighborhoods, but when looking further into how this method of zoning pans out, there are many consequences.  This results in limiting a variety of things, including the prevention of lower-class individual’s ability to attend the schools in these areas and class mobility.  These two problems go hand in hand, as a good education in a school with a variety of resources can greatly increase a person’s chance of rising out of poverty. A child who attends school in an area where 80 percent or more of the attendees are living in poverty scores 13 to 15 percent lower than those who attend a school where 80 of the kids come from middle or upper class backgrounds. ²  Not only does education play a role in class mobility, but also when poor communities are shut off from other areas of the city (often, surburbs) because of exclusionary zoning, this creates concentrated ghettos, areas where there are little mixed-class interactions.

Pinkwater shows in a very simplified way that people are afraid of something different.  When people live in a neighborhood where the houses all look somewhat alike, it is easy.  But that does not help society progress into what it could be since it silences the voice of a large chunk of the population by pushing them into the only place they can afford—places that have continually mediocre schools to teach their kids.

Works Cited:

Pinkwater, Daniel Manus. The Big Orange Splot. New York: Hastings House, 1977. Print.

“Exclusionary Zoning.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 09 Aug. 2012. Web. 17 Sept. 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusionary_zoning>.

“Inclusionary Zoning.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 28 Apr. 2012. Web. 17 Sept. 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclusionary_zoning>.