Unlocking Housing Supply Through Regulatory Reform: Lessons from the Past, Strategies for the Future

Grant Year: 2019

Diane Levy and Rolf Pendall will explore the extent to which the reform of land use regulations can stimulate economic development by increasing the production of housing units and lowering rental costs. They will build a database of reforms undertaken to liberalize land use regulations across the country and then assess whether those reforms were associated with changes in housing permits issued, housing units constructed, and rental costs. They will also conduct analyses of how some reforms were implemented in order to understand how political obstacles to liberalizing land use rules can be overcome. The project’s findings will appear in a report and a series of policy briefs.