Zoned Out

Today our ongoing History of Poverty is continued with Parts R1, R2, R3, and Parts U1 through U6: Zoning ordinances. Let the hilarity ensue!

Last time we danced around construction regulations. We said those have deprived poor people of the kind of cheap housing they've used in times past. To the degree that is so, the government (that means all of us -- it's our government) is responsible for that much homelessness and has a moral obligation to correct the negative effects of those regulations.

That in itself justifies increasing subsidized housing in this country. But the government has not only meddled in the housing market by regulating construction. There is also zoning, the institutionalization of across-the-board NIMBY-ism: Not In My Backyard, Not In My Neighbor's Backyard, Not In Anyone's Backyard.

I know all about zoning, having spent 1998 in a cave playing Classic Sim City 18 hours a day until I became emaciated. The trick is to put commerce between the residential and industrial zones. Duh.

You might think they'd been around since the reign of Henry III, but actually city-wide zoning ordinances didn't happen in this country until the time of WW I. They were first enacted in New York City to help preserve sunlight for residents finding themselves too much in the shadows of newly built skyscrapers.

Zoning was controversial then. Some thought it violated the Constitution, amounting to a taking without due process. In fact a court struck down the zoning law of Euclid, Ohio, as unconstitutional. But the ruling was appealed to the Supreme Court, which decided in 1926 that Euclid's zoning ordinances were Okey Dokey after all. I tried to read the ruling so I could explain it here, but it's all "averred this", and "alleged that", and appell-ees, and appell-ants, and nuisances and such, and I had appointments to keep with my life, so I gave up. But the gist seems to be the court upheld restrictions on industrial uses, while saying little to nothing about restrictions on residential uses, on account of those not being at issue in that case.


[Above: From zoning maps on the Seattle.gov website.]

Still, the Supreme Court had said the Euclid, Ohio, model was fine, and a precedent is a precedent, so just about every other town and city in the country latched onto the Euclid model, so that now everybody's zoning ordinances are called "Euclidean," and we're pretty much stuck with them, including the residential restrictions the court didn't have to address.

This is a pity. I think we all agree it's reasonable that pulp mills, which stink, should not be built next door to me, Dr. Wes Browning. Other uses of property that I'm sure all will agree should not be allowed next door to me include slaughterhouses, and fish canneries, which likewise both stink, airports (too loud), fire departments (too loud), dog parks (too many wet dogs), flower gardens (make me sneeze), and nail-care shops (too strip-mall-ish). But is it right, really, that my city government should be able to pass a law prohibiting my neighbor from renting a room out?

That's what we have now in the descendants of the Euclid zoning ordinances. Cities and towns tell us all where we can build apartments and where there must be single family housing. In Seattle, single family housing has its own god and he lives in our zoning law, and he makes it illegal for poor people to be housed in rooms rented by home-owners.

The wrong people sued the city of Euclid. Instead of a business suing, it should have been a class-action suit by all the homeless people of today, visited upon the Supreme Court of 1926 by time machine.

Pregnant Exercises

1. If the test case for zoning law had involved Sim City, wouldn't most of the zoning ordinances in use today be called Simian? Ha.

2. The ancients believed that if you could name a god you could destroy it. Do us a favor and name the god of single family housing.