The Portland City Council wants to spend at least 30% of all urban renewal dollars on housing subsidies. Their concern is that skyrocketing home prices have made it difficult for lower-income families to live in the city.
Unfortunately, Council members are boxed in by their own ideology of urban planning. A central reason why housing is so expensive in Portland (and most other Oregon cities) is that the government has created an artificial shortage of homes through zoning and other types of land-use regulation.
A recent study by the Brookings Institution found this to be true on a national scale as well. The authors examined land-use polices among the nation’s 50 largest cities, and found that those cities with the least amount of zoning
