The Federal Role in Reducing Regualtory Barriers to Affordable Housing in the Suburbs
![handle is hein.journals/jlp8 and id is 713 raw text is: The Federal Role in Reducing Regulatory Barriers to
Affordable Housing in the Suburbs
by Michael H. Schill*
On July 8, 1991, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Jack
Kemp delivered to President Bush a report produced by the Advisory
Commission on Regulatory Barriers to Affordable Housing. The
report, entitled Not In My Back Yard: Removing Barriers to Affordable
Housing,' concluded that suburbs have erected regulatory barriers to
housing for low and moderate income households and recommended a
series of actions to relax these restrictions. The Commission's judg-
ment is hardly surprising; since the late 1960s, a number of presidential
commissions have decried the exclusionary practices engaged in by
municipalities.2 What makes this report noteworthy is that it envisions
a fundamental role for the federal government in eliminating these bar-
riers. If the Commission's recommendations are enacted into law, the
federal government will, for the first time, deny certain forms of hous-
ing assistance to states that do not adopt barrier removal strategies.'
President Bush has incorporated the recommendations contained in
Not in My Back Yard into his 1993 budget proposals.4 These proposals
for the federal government to crack down on states and localities are
all the more significant when viewed in the context of the Bush Admin-
* Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania. I would like to thank Seth Kreimer and
Stewart Sterk for their comments on an earlier draft.
I Advisory Commission on Regulatory Barriers to Affordable Housing, Not in My Back
Yard: Removing Barriers to Affordable Housing (1991) [hereinafter Not In My Back Yard].
2 See, e.g., National Commission on Urban Problems, Building The American City 235
(1968) (urging action to assure that local governments exercising regulatory authority are
responsive to the needs of broad segments of the population .... ); President's Commission
on Housing, The Report of the President's Commission on Housing 199 (1982) (Excessive
restrictions on housing production have driven up the price of housing generally, damaging
the new housing market and the filtering process that makes older units available to families
seeking to 'move up' to more desirable accommodations.); President's Committee on Urban
Housing, A Decent Home 142 (1968) (In many urban communities, the net effect of public
land policies is to reduce the supply of land available for modest-cost housing and thus to
increase its cost.).
3 See infra text accompanying notes 20-27.
4 Budget of the United States Fiscal Year 1993, 182-183 (1992).
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The Federal Role in Reducing Regualtory Barriers to Affordable Housing in the Suburbs
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