Report Publish Date: July 12, 2023
This article proposes and evaluates a way of measuring whether local land-use policies promote fair housing and reverse segregation, or the concept of “affirmatively furthering fair housing” (AFFH).
The Fair Housing Act requires local governments that receive federal housing funding to affirmatively further fair housing, but it does not define how to do that. Obama-era policy aimed to lay out steps municipalities should take. In California, a recent law includes a requirement to affirmatively further fair housing in its statewide planning process. The authors wanted to develop a measurement that determines whether land-use plans aimed at furthering integration really do reduce income and racial/ethnic segregation. The researchers tested their measure on California cities that had undergone land-use planning with the goal of meeting the state’s AFFH requirements.
The Fair Housing Act requires local governments that receive federal housing funding to affirmatively further fair housing, but it does not define how to do that. Obama-era policy aimed to lay out steps municipalities should take. In California, a recent law includes a requirement to affirmatively further fair housing in its statewide planning process. The authors wanted to develop a measurement that determines whether land-use plans aimed at furthering integration really do reduce income and racial/ethnic segregation. The researchers tested their measure on California cities that had undergone land-use planning with the goal of meeting the state’s AFFH requirements.
The authors proposed a fair housing land use score (FHLUS). They use FHLUS to analyze land-use plans in Yorba Linda, Santa Monica, and Inglewood, and compare their measurement to California’s Department of Housing and Community Development’s guidance to cities on how to assess their land-use policies’ impact on integration.
" We found that even in recently created and state-certified housing plans with extensive AFFH analysis, land use policies exacerbated segregation rather than worked against it.”
— Paavo Monkkonen, Michael Lens, and Gregory Preston, UCLA; Moira O’Neill, University of Virginia; Christopher Elmendorf, UC Davis; and Raine Robichaud, independent researcher
“Our analysis suggests that regulators can and should measure whether land use policies promote integration,” the authors write.
$247,029
Awarded on: 11/20/2020
Timeframe: 2020-2023
Grant number: 78158
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Problem, research strategy, and findings
The 1968 Fair Housing Act required local government recipients of federal money to take meaningful actions to affirmatively further fair housing (AFFH). Current fair housing analysis requirements are copious but do not request an assessment of how land use policies affect the potential for neighborhood integration. A recent California law requires local governments to include AFFH analysis in existing planning processes, and state guidelines encourage the measurement of the spatial distribution of planned sites for low-income housing with respect to opportunity. We propose and evaluate a fair housing land use score (FHLUS) that measures whether local governments’ land use policies promote inclusion across neighborhoods. We illustrate the FHLUS by examining zoning and housing plans for three municipalities in California that differ in terms of neighborhood variation in incomes. In all three cases, we found that municipal zoning and housing plans exacerbated patterns of segregation rather than reversed them. Our metric is more precise than existing approaches, but all measures of this phenomenon will be less useful in smaller, more homogenous jurisdictions. The analysis raises important questions about the geographic scale and outcome measures for AFFH analysis and expectations for municipalities of different sizes and levels of diversity.
Takeaway for practice
Our metric is a useful tool for advocates and planners at all levels of government. We recommend the federal government consider incorporating it into the AFFH toolkit and practicing planners employ the measure to analyze local zoning and investment decisions. The Technical Appendix is a step-by-step guide, including an Excel formula.
Journal of the American Planning Association, 90(2), 247–260. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944363.2023.2213214
Figure 1. Two hypothetical plans for low-income housing development overlaid on neighborhood median household incomes. Source: Authors.
This study and report was conducted and created by the following people.
