Katherine Levine Einstein, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of political science at Boston University, with research and teaching interests that broadly include local politics and policy, racial and ethnic politics, and American public policy. Her most recent book was Neighborhood Defenders: Participatory Politics and America’s Housing Crisis, which explores the politics of housing development.

Kol Peterson: Hey everybody. Thanks for joining us on the ADU Hour.  I am super excited for today's guest, Katherine Levine- Einstein.

 This topic is  fascinating background about the way that land use decisions are made at the local level across the country and that has some important impacts in terms of understanding what advocates [00:03:00] for infill housing should consider doing strategically in terms of improving regulations for middle housing, ADUs, et cetera.

Thanks so much for coming to join us today, Katherine, I stumbled upon your work through another podcast that I listened to. I want to confess right up front, I haven't read the book, but I wanted to take this opportunity to take some of the things that you've written about and researched and frame it in the context of some of the issues that come up time and time again with ADUs.

Before I launch more into my questions, let me just give you a minute to introduce yourself.

Katherine Levine-Einstein: Sure. So I'm an associate professor of Political Science at Boston University and I study Urban Politics and Housing Politics, and I'm one of the authors of the book "Neighborhood Defenders, Participatory Politics in America's Housing Crisis".

Kol Peterson: Have you considered doing an audio book?

Katherine Levine-Einstein:  It's definitely a great idea. I don't frankly know if the University Press has that kind of bandwidth. But yeah, I'm with you. Audio books are the way to go.

Kol Peterson: Yeah, for me, it's just like how I [00:04:00] consume. So anyway, and this, this series will eventually become an audio podcast for what that's worth for people who are listening.

So there's 19,495  incorporated cities, towns, and villages in the US, 310 cities with a population of  a hundred thousand or more. Neighborhood level politics, that is, city councils, associations. Play an outsized role in how land is developed in the United States. Americans like local democratic processes. So, why is this a problem?

Katherine Levine-Einstein: Yeah. So democratic processes, I mean, you say that word, that sounds really good. Right? Like having land use be democratic? I think most people hear that, they say, "yeah, that's how it should be "people who live in a community should have a say over what goes on. And indeed, that's why we have these regulations in the first place. That when we sort of had a developer dominated system back during the Urban Renewal Days, a lot of bad things happened in neighborhoods.

So there are sort of good reasons to have urban planning practices be really oriented towards neighborhood level [00:05:00] input. But in practice it can be deeply problematic because we may not be empowering a representative democratic subset of the neighborhood, right? What we show in our research is that the people who show up to these neighborhood level meetings are deeply unrepresentative of their communities in a way that actually depresses the supply of housing in the United States and the supply of affordable housing in particular. The people who show up to these meetings are privileged. They're homeowners, they're older, they're whiter, and they're overwhelmingly opposed to the construction of new housing.

Kol Peterson: Let's frame your  research a little bit, so that we'll know what you did. And then tell us a little bit more about the numbers behind those findings of the demographics of people who actually show up to these meetings.

Katherine Levine-Einstein: Yeah, so our book is about these participatory processes. You know, when we told people  we're going to go out and study neighborhood meetings at planning and zoning boards.  Really is that so interesting and important? But, I suspect I don't have to convince the audience here.

 These are incredibly important, these meetings are what dictate whether or not housing gets built in most [00:06:00] communities in the United States.  So we really wanted to understand what happened in this sort of hyper-local politics. And so what we wanted to do is go out and document who shows up to these meetings and what do they say? And Massachusetts turns out, because of unique open meeting laws in the state, to provide an incredible opportunity to do so.

So what we did is we went out and we collected meeting minutes for three years worth of meetings across 97 cities and towns in Massachusetts. And what made the data for Massachusetts really unusual is that in addition to including  a list of public comments that happened at these meetings, we were able to learn the names and addresses of the people who participated in these public forums.

And when you have someone's name and address, you can link them with a lot of other administrative data and learn really interesting and important demographic information. So from those meeting minutes, we were able to learn how demographically and attitudinally representative the people are who show up to these public meetings.

The first k ey finding that we had is that these [00:07:00] folks were privileged. They were about 25 percentage points more likely to be homeowners than the general population in their community. They were over 20 percentage points more likely to be over the age of 50. They were about 10 percentage points, more likely to be white, right?

So these are folks who occupy positions of privilege in their communities. They also overwhelmingly do not like the construction of new housing. So we looked at public meetings that involved the construction of one or more units of housing. So we looked at everything involving meetings  had accessory dwelling units up to like big apartment complexes.

And we found that only 14% of people showed up to these meetings in support of the construction of new housing. So, overwhelmingly the voices that planning and zoning board officials hear and that city councils hear, are people who are opposed to new housing developments.

Kol Peterson: So 14% showed up in support of the projects and all the rests showed up as opposing the projects?

Katherine Levine-Einstein:  Most of them, I think at [00:08:00] 65% showed up opposed, and the rest showed up as neutral. There were a lot of those neutral folks were in fact opposed, but they were sort of asking  clarifying questions about whether the developer had complied with parking studies or something like that.

Kol Peterson: And then you took that data in your study and you contrasted it to legislative support for affordable housing so that kind of gives you a baseline of theoretically , this demographic should have one feeling towards affordable housing, but in practice when it comes to development in their own backyard this is what we see. So can you talk about the differences?

Katherine Levine-Einstein: Absolutely. So another great thing about studying Massachusetts was in 2010, we actually had a ballot referendum about public support for affordable housing, so there's a piece of statewide legislation here in Massachusetts called Chapter 40 B, which allows housing developments that have a certain percentage of affordable housing to bypass local zoning regulations.

And so this was up for a ballot referendum in 2010. And so it gives us a [00:09:00] rough sense in each city and town, the extent to which individuals support the production of affordable housing and  the ability to bypass local zoning to accomplish that goal. So the ballot referendum passed. So this law is still in place in Massachusetts.

And what we found is in every single city and town that we studied, support for housing was higher as measured in this ballot referendum than it was when we actually went and looked on the ground at support from new housing at these planning and zoning board meetings. I think liberal Cambridge, Massachusetts is  the best illustration of this.

So 80% of Cambridge, Massachusetts voters in 2010 came out in support of chapter 40 B. But only 40% of commenters at Cambridge planning and zoning board meetings show up in support of the construction of new housing. So when it comes to developments in their own backyard, the people who show up to these meetings are considerably more opposed to new housing.

Kol Peterson: So what does this tell you about the disparity of those who are empowered to participate in local [00:10:00] zoning processes and the general ideological sentiment towards infill housing in general?

Katherine Levine-Einstein: Yeah. I mean, what it tells me is that the people who show up to these meetings are not representative of their broader communities. And they're not representative in ways that are gonna depress the supply of housing. And it, this is really problematic, right? Because one, it's depressing the supply of housing relative to what the general public wants, right? Like if we sort of look at general public opinions, especially in these high costs, communities like Boston, San Francisco, Seattle, we see high levels of support for new housing, but when it comes to the housing actually being built in specific neighborhoods, when we empower neighborhoods to have a say over whether or not they want housing there, the evidence suggests that those neighborhoods overwhelmingly saying, "No thanks, we don't want housing".

I sorta think the second important point timbers from our data, when we think about this broader housing politics is this is not just a story of people showing up in opposition to big apartment complexes, right? This is a story about people coming out in opposition for a townhouse or [00:11:00] accessory dwelling unit being built in their community.

And so these neighborhood meetings get really contentious, not just when it's a big development, but sometimes when it's like a pretty modest one.

Kol Peterson:  Can you explain the theory of Cost for Political P articipation in the process and let's cover both the expertise element of it, the time required element, then this theory of concentrated costs and diffuse benefits.

Katherine Levine-Einstein: Yeah. Two big reasons that the folks who show up to these meetings are deeply unrepresentative of their broader communities. The first is that it's incredibly costly to participate in these forums. And the second is that the people who are sort of weakly supportive of new housing may not be especially interested in showing up to these developments.

So when we look at canonical political science research, we know that the biggest drivers of whether or not you participate in politics, are whether you have the resources to participate, and whether you're interested to participate. And we believe that both of those factors are really critical to explaining why the people who show up to these planning and zoning board meetings are really unrepresentative of their broader communities, right.

So starting with these [00:12:00] sort of resource-based costs, going to the planning and zoning board meeting is like a big outlay of time, right? So you have to have two to three hours of your life that you're willing to give up, you have to have the childcare. There's  a lot of just like basic costs to showing up to one of these meetings, you also have to develop the expertise.

These meetings often devolve really quickly into the minutia of whether or not a setback is big enough or whether or not a parking study or a traffic study is required. If you're not someone who is intimately familiar with the lingo of variances and special permits, these meetings are not going to feel really accessible to you, right?

So another cost is developing that expertise. So there's really big cost barriers. There's also, again, the second big factor there, these big interest barriers to showing up. So new housing developments have concentrated costs and diffuse benefits. So let's just imagine, you know, a townhouse development, right?

Like not, not sort of a major apartment building, but just sort of a small housing development. The benefits of that housing development, if I'm measuring  across the whole city in it, [00:13:00] City that has a shortage of housing, that the benefits of that they're like pretty diffused. You know, we're not going to really measure a significant decrease in housing costs from the construction of those two new units.

But the cost of that building of two new units is really concentrated. If I live next door to that townhouse development, I'm going to have to listen to construction noise for like a year maybe, or I'm going to have to have my view changed in a way that I don't like, or maybe there's going to be more cars parked in front of my house.

There are all these things that are going to be very motivating to me, as the next door neighbor, to show up in a way that even if I'm the most ardent pro housing supporter in the world, I'm probably not going to show up to a planning or zoning board meeting about a townhouse across town. That's just not a useful outlay of my time given  the diffuse benefits.

Kol Peterson: Yeah. And it, it really begs the question, " Who would actually show up for a meeting for a proposed project near them in general?"  It totally makes sense that [00:14:00] everybody has NIMBY predispositions, even myself.

We don't want change near us. We don't want more parking near us, we don't want more housing near us.  We all kind of feel this way and it's almost a natural thing yet  our democratic process at the local level is set up to empower that predisposition that we have.

Katherine Levine-Einstein: Yeah. So there's really good psychological research out there that shows that we, as humans are just innately sensitive to changes in our neighborhood. Like we respond really strongly to changes in our community. And so it totally makes sense. A development  definitionally is a rapid change to your community, even if it's one of a pretty modest scope. Having a new townhouse go in next door is a really big change to your view.  It's a big and rapid change to the environment into which you bought into.

 Those kinds of rapid changes, we know have a strong impact on people's attitudes and they're motivating, they get you sort of interested in politics and eager to show up to these forums. And as you said, these forums are therefore designed [00:15:00] to capture that exact set of preferences. The people who are intensely motivated to show up and have the resources to do so.

Kol Peterson: For those of us who haven't been through this type of local land use process at the local level, can you help  set up for us what a local meeting dynamic that occurs for a proposed housing development project would look like?

Katherine Levine-Einstein: Yeah, sure. So there's obviously a lot different ways this can go and some of them are a lot more contentious than others. But I can provide sort of a pretty standard example of a  multi-family housing development that happened in Cambridge.

 So this particular developer I think it was in 2015, he showed up and it was this like terrible abandoned warehouse near a mass transit stop in Cambridge. And so he shows up and says, "I would like to convert this abandoned warehouse into four condominium units. Each with one parking space."

 Because he was proposing converting a she'll use into a residential one he needed to get a special permit. And so he found himself before the [00:16:00] Cambridge planning board in order to get a special permit.  So the way that this typically goes, he comes to the meeting, he presents his plan, then the Cambridge planning board asks them like pretty technocratic questions. And at that moment it's turned over, to public comment.

 In most places in the United States, Cambridge is not unique by any means, when you need to get a variance or a special permit. Given the way that land use is set up in the United States, most of the time, if you want to build more than one unit of housing, that's going to be your situation. You have to present your plans in front of a public body. And as part of open meeting laws that members of the public then have the opportunity to comment on that housing development.  They can sort of say anything that's pertinent to the proceedings at hand.

And so at this particular meeting in 2015, after the developer presents his plans, there were a few neighbors who showed up. Every single one of them deeply opposed to the project. Some of them talked about like foundation issues at their houses that had, one person showed up, she was a lawyer, with handouts [00:17:00] indicating that the developer was violating zoning proceedings.Other people were worried about parking issues. And so after hearing from the neighborhood, the planning board, which had initially been like pretty supportive of the project, was considerably more concerned. And they said to the developer, look, you need to go talk to the neighbors and you need to get us a parking study and an engineering study, each of which can cost the developer, you know, $10,000 so these are not cheap.

It also meant that the developer had to come back three months later after  the carrying costs and the other costs associated with holding onto a project and delaying and development by three months. So he comes back three months later and says, okay, I've talked to the neighbors, I've done my studies.

And now instead of developing four units, each with one parking space, I'm going to do three units each with two parking spaces. And so at one level, that's maybe not such a big deal, it's only one year lost and a few extra parking spaces. But when we start to think about that process, getting repeated thousands of times over in [00:18:00] cities, across the country, it's not hard to see how these neighborhood politics are reducing our supply of housing and creating a housing crunch in so many places.

Kol Peterson: You explicitly moved away from using the term "NIMBY", which is a little bit contentious, and instead using a different term "Neighborhood Defenders"  in your book,  is that a term that's intended to be synonymous? Or can you explain what that terms about?

Katherine Levine-Einstein: Yeah. So we talk about the people who show up at these public meetings as being "Neighborhood Defenders" and we very deliberately wanted to move away from this term NIMBY, which refers to people who are "not in my backyard, I don't want new housing here". We think NIMBY connotes, inherently sort of selfish attitudes about, you know, one's own property values, one zone house. And what we observed with me read through thousands of pages of meeting minutes is that's not actually the attitude of most of the people who show up to these meetings.

Most of the people who show up to these public meetings, invokes sort of community concerns. "I'm worried about my neighborhood. I'm worried about my neighborhood character. [00:19:00] I love my community and I want to protect it".  That is sort of the impetus behind people who are worried about parking, who are worried about wildlife, who are worried about wetlands. It's these broader community concerns. And so we think one that this term "Neighborhood Defender" better captures these individuals self conceptualization, but we also think it better captures why these individuals are so persuasive.  The Cambridge planning board could've just ignored the neighbors, right? They had that power. This wasn't a situation where the neighbors get to vote on a development. So the Cambridge planning board could have said. "We hear your concerns, neighbors, but we're just going to go ahead and approve this project because we think this neighborhood of Cambridge desperately needs more housing". And they didn't do that.

And I think part of why these folks are persuasive is because they don't seem selfish. They seem community oriented and like representatives of their community.

Kol Peterson:  Let's go into the history  of nimbyism a little bit.  I had  come across information that there was a connection to the environmental movement, which I think is fascinating and that back in 1970s, the Cuyahoga river [00:20:00] in Ohio was burning and neighborhood conservationist and environmentalist were coming out and trying  to fight the pollution that was associated with that. And I think that had some connection with the origin of the kind of environmental movement slash modern environmental movement slash nimbyism.

 Now nimbyism has taken on a new understanding as of late, but then there's also conflation or connection to urban renewal and environmental regulations that are occurring that make development more challenging. Can you just help tease apart these different topics for us?

Katherine Levine-Einstein: Absolutely. So I actually want to route this a little bit thinking about again this Cambridge housing development.  The reason that that Cambridge housing development had to go before a planning board was because there was a land use regulation in place that said, "anything that converts a commercial use to a residential use has to go before a public meeting."

 If there hadn't been that land use regulation, then this housing development could have happened what is called "By Right". And if a development can [00:21:00] happen by right, it doesn't have to go through this lengthy process.   If we're really interested in understanding, okay, so why do things show up in front of these meetings?

We need to understand the origins of these land use regulations. Why do cities and towns have them? When did these land use regulations that are coming to being?

The answer is it's sort of a confluence of a bunch of different movements and different zoning codes emerged at different times. So some set of land use regulations actually date back as early as the 1920s.

That's when we start to see zoning ordinances really come into vogue. And a lot of the impetus there is really explicitly rooted in segregating communities by race and by class. There's been really good books written on this by  Richard Rothstein and Jessica Trounstine, about the racial origins of zoning and land use regulations.

These ordinances came into being to keep people of color and poor people from moving into communities.  So a lot of places where folks live,  you've probably all heard about conversations about single family zoning, a lot of regulations that [00:22:00] ban multi family housing very much came into being with this sort of race and class-based origins.

 But then there's a sort of separate set of land use regulations that start emerging in the 1970s. So we start to see this big proliferation of land use regulations oriented around environmental uses and around neighborhood meetings that emerged during that time period.  I already talked a little bit about urban renewal. So one thing that went on is during the 1950s and 1960s we essentially had developers bulldozing communities of color and low-income communities.  We were building highways and downtown shopping malls and all of these uses that weren't really serving those communities.  After that happened a lot of urban planners said, my God, we, we actually need to like talk to neighborhoods.

And not just bulldoze them,  we may not know what's best for communities.  From urban renewal emerges, in a lot of cities, this really noble impulse to actually listen to communities that are being affected by development. At the same time, you talk about the Cuyahoga River,  there's lots of different examples of this, there also [00:23:00] this whole series of terrible environmental outcomes happening and we have suburban sprawl, like ruining wetlands. There's  a lot of recognition among environmentalist that the way we were doing development was deeply harmful to a lot of vulnerable, natural resources.

At the same time, we also see a lot of communities start to create wetland regulations or Vernal pool regulations, or Vernal pool, buffer zones. Things that essentially make it really hard to develop anywhere near a Vernal pool or a wetland and require you to get like lots of extra permitting. And again,  that sounds probably good to most people where you're like, yeah, we probably should be protecting some of our wetlands and our Vernal pools and these other very important natural resources.

But when you sort of layer them on to all these other land use regulations, what happens is in practice, each of these additional regulations makes it harder to build a new housing, especially in high opportunity communities that seem to love to add these land use regulations.

Kol Peterson: I have a an [00:24:00] observation which is some of the most  politically liberal cities in this country seem to have some of the strongest NIMBY strands I've observed. Berkeley, California, Eugene,  Boulder, and Cambridge, perhaps, I don't know if Cambridge would really stand out or not, but  is there any correlation there or am I just  projecting that?

Katherine Levine-Einstein: Yeah. So it actually turns out, if you look within those liberal places, it's the most conservative people who are more opposed to housing.  In our data in Massachusetts, it's obviously a pretty liberal place  if you look at like what predicts whether someone's supposed to the construction of new housing, things like being a homeowner, if you own your home, your more opposed the construction of new housing. Also being a Republican predicts being opposed to the construction of new housing.

And there's other folks like Mike Hankinson, who's done more survey work that showed that conservatism is actually more associated with being opposed to new housing. But all that said, you're right to note that some of the most contentious battles that we have over new housing development seem to be happening in places like Berkeley, California Cambridge, [00:25:00] Massachusetts.

 Those are the places that are facing the most acute pressures for new housing.  Those have been places that have experienced incredible economic growth over the last few decades.  They haven't been able to  match that demand for  new housing.  In some ways that's why we're seeing more of the  housing crisis emerged there is because there's been so much economic growth, it's created demand that we're not necessarily seeing in more conservative cities.  But I actually do want to stress that this phenomenon is not just limited to these really expensive cities.

 I'm from Milwaukee, Wisconsin and as a Wisconsin native,  I was interested in  understanding how these processes play out in my hometown, which is not a place that is having the kinds of housing crunches that are experienced in Berkeley, California, Cambridge, Massachusetts. And even in these kinds of places like Milwaukee, we do see  similar kinds of dynamics playing out at neighborhood meetings. And the place where you see it is in the most privileged part of town. So you look at both the privileged suburbs and the [00:26:00] privileged neighborhoods within the city of Milwaukee, you see folks there fighting the construction of new housing.  Even in these less  crazy housing markets, we do see advantaged towns and advantaged neighborhoods still activate to protect their boundaries and stop the development of housing.

Kol Peterson: So for some context  my opinion as a subject matter expert is that Massachusetts has very restrictive ADU regulations, relatively speaking, along with most of the country,  that's just a general observation.

Part of what makes it restrictive in Massachusetts is so many towns require a special permit, which is also known as a conditional land use permit. Can you share with us  any statistics you have about the impacts that a special permit requirement or a conditional land use permit requirement has  on the likelihood that an average homeowner would pursue  a home improvement project?

Katherine Levine-Einstein: Yeah. So I haven't looked at this for eighties specifically. But those are research and that of many economists has essentially shown that every time you add a new [00:27:00] regulation onto the housing development process, you make it more expensive to build and you reduce the supply of housing.  Applying that research to the world of ADUs, I would say, anytime you add a requirement in a special permit is a very onerous requirement, you are going to reduce the likelihood that someone's going to pursue that because it's going to be a lot more expensive. It's going to take longer, you're going to have to presumably hire more experts to get yourself through the public hearing process, you have to pull more permits. All those things cost money and time.

 We know from just more general research and land use regulations, that's going to make it harder to do and reduce the overall supply.

Kol Peterson: What's the difference between a special permit and a variance?

Katherine Levine-Einstein:  So variance from existing zoning is essentially, you're saying " I know that I'm in a commercial zone, but I want to build something residential."

So then you're getting a variance from existing zoning. You're essentially asking for an exception to the existing zoning code. A special permit is different because a special permit essentially says, you have to get this permission to build [00:28:00] multi-family housing anywhere in this city. Right? So in a lot of places that's sort of the context in which I think about this, the most you to build an accessory dwelling unit, or a townhouse, or three family housing, have to pull a special permit.

It doesn't matter where you build it, there's no zone where we let you build this without asking for this extra permission.

Kol Peterson: As a general matter, based on your professional research on this topic, et cetera. Do you believe, or is it your your opinion that neighbors should be given authority in the decision making process that their neighbor has over property improvements?

Katherine Levine-Einstein: No, so I think this neighborhood meeting process is sort of it's undemocratic.  When I've talked about this work before, I've had people at public meetings come upto me and say, "you're being undemocratic for advocating for getting rid of these meetings". And I would say we spent years looking at this evidence and the evidence tells us that what is happening at these meetings is deeply undemocratic.

And it's, it's [00:29:00] undemocratic in a way that it's really hurting urban areas. It's depressing the supply of housing, especially in high opportunity neighborhoods. It's making it harder for low-income people to move into sort of the most privileged parts of our cities. So, no, I don't think that  these processes are working as they should.

 I, like many others, advocate for making more development by right, that allow members of the public to have a say over what land use regulations look like. So we should absolutely be incorporating public input. And I would argue members of the public certainly have a right to vote out officials who pass these policies that they don't like.

But once the land use regulations are set, we should be allowing property owners to be developing to what those land use regulations specify without having to go through an ad hoc and unpredictable neighborhood permit process.

Kol Peterson: What's your take on the most frequent objections that we're hearing in general, in the U S about,  around proposed residentially zoned Don conforming housing development project?

 A lot of jurisdictions, [00:30:00] not just in Massachusetts, but elsewhere. There's a conditional land use process and you have to go through a public process  and, and the frequent objections, among other ones, are, " This is going to change the character of our single family, residential neighborhood". Whether it's a city-wide process or a local project  that can be a complaint that would be issued by a neighborhood defender.

How often does this neighborhood character concept arise as a rationale for obstructing new proposed developments.

Katherine Levine-Einstein: Oh, all the time neighborhood character is a really frequent objection. And a lot of people sort of wonder, like, is this a code word for like race or class-based bias?

And that's, that turns out to be really hard to prove, but it's, it's hard not to see it there at least some of the time that people raise it. Some of the other concerns that we hear a lot about traffic parking, the environment. And I will stress that those traffic and parking concerns, and this sort of blew our minds as we read through the meeting minutes, like it doesn't just happen with big apartment buildings where maybe you could say, okay, there are 200 new apartment units, maybe that's going to change traffic loads, but people will [00:31:00] raise that with like a five unit building. They'll say, it's going to change traffic. And you sort of are like, how can that be? There's only going to be five or 10 new cars tops, but people really  worry a lot about those traffic and parking and environmental concerns.

Kol Peterson: Something else you've alluded to is  this traffic study or parking study. Say I want to build an ADU, I want to convert my garage to an ADU. Can't provide an off-street parking spot, can't replace it. The driveway leading up to the garage doesn't classify as an off street parking spot, according to the zoning code. Is it a reasonable thing to ask me to do a traffic study or a parking study.

Katherine Levine-Einstein: They're really expensive, right. So when we require those things we make it much more expensive to build.

I think my take on that would be that clearly, there are some projects where we want to see parking studies and traffic studies. And I think we should have planners who are experts in those areas work with engineers and other people in city staff to come up with a really clear set of requirements about here are the kinds of projects that absolutely need to [00:32:00] provide us with a parking study and a traffic study.

And here's what we need to see from that parking and traffic study to  view it as conforming with city requirements. Because one of the things that is sort of especially problematic about these neighborhood processes, it's actually not just that neighborhoods can demand, like you need to give me a parking study.

It's if they don't like the results of the first study, they can ask for a new one.

 As part of our book, we interviewed a lot of developers across the country. And a story we heard from multiple ones was that we had to do like two, three, four in one case five traffic studies for the same project, because the neighbors kept raising objections to the one that the developer had provided.

 I totally buy that they're unscrupulous developers who cut corners and provide terrible traffic studies. And I think that is something that local governments can set clear requirements around to avoid. They can say here's what comprises a good traffic study. And if you meet those requirements, you don't have to provide four more, just because the neighbors didn't like the results.

Kol Peterson:  Given this entrenched [00:33:00] dynamic that is more or less  a truism that people don't like change and that   they're going to object at a local level to proposed projects. What are some practical approaches that ADU advocates, infill housing advocates in general should consider in the face of this type of  dynamic?

Katherine Levine-Einstein:  At a sort of more policy level, as much as  possible advocate for policies that allow for ADUs by right. Any time you can get around this sort of ad hoc and neighborhood process, it's going to make it easier for folks to build.  I think at a sort of policy level, avoid the special permits as much as you can, but obviously that's easier said than done.

And sometimes getting these policies passed in communities is incredibly contentious in the special permit is like the compromise that lets you get it done. So thinking more micro, if you're that property owner is trying to get an ADU through a neighborhood process, I think clearly the most important thing is making sure you have supporters in the room.

Ideally make sure if you don't have opponents in the room.  We did read through [00:34:00] meeting minutes where essentially the meeting around an ADU work extremely uncontentious, you know, someone brought like two neighbors with them who are like, yeah, Joe's a nice guy. You should let him build this ADU.

And then no one showed up in opposition. And so the thing went through really easily and it was presumably a reasonably low stress process for the homeowners. So I think making sure that you line up some form of support at these hearings. And if you do hear wind of opposition, really thinking about ways to frame the opposition as being unreasonable or NIMBY in some ways.

Right. I think it's really important.

Kol Peterson: I think we've started to see some you know YIMBY yes. In my backyard movements to kind of coalesce  in support of local projects. Any observations to share about that, that you've heard about.

Katherine Levine-Einstein: Yeah, no. So, I mean, I wish and so many people people have asked me about this a lot in regards to our Massachusetts data, because Cambridge has a very active YIMBY movement now.

And unfortunately our data collection stopped in 2017. And I would say the movement there, it really picked up in 2018, 2019. And so thinking about [00:35:00] sort of where a YIMBY movement can be most effective and looking at Cambridge. In some ways, the place where they've been most effective is actually organizing around pro-housing city council candidates, right?

That at the end of the day, to get good housing legislation passed, you need to have politicians in place who are willing to sort of put into, put into place policies. Like in Cambridge, the affordable housing overlay, we look at Minneapolis, something like abolishing single family zoning, right?

Like that requires the actions of politicians who are pro-housing. And so if I were advising YIMBYs, I would say, go out and organize and get those candidates elected so we can pass the citywide legislation that allows for more housing to be built by right. More recently we've seen

Kol Peterson: states like California and Oregon step in with pretty aggressive or assertive statewide ADU legislation superseding local control over ADUs ordinances.

While this may be seen as a bit heavy handed to some city officials and planning staff in the sense that [00:36:00] historically zoning controls is at the local level. I'm now, personally, becoming convinced that this is the only reasonable pathway forward, to enacting     best practices for ADU zoning regulations.

For the most contentious things like Austria parking, owner occupancy requirements. The only reasonable pathway forward in the sense that I am impatient. I'm not willing to do this through 190,000 jurisdictions in the United States. I want to do it through 50 or, you know, however many handful of states are willing  to take this on where there's actually promise of our potential for ADUs to play a role in addressing housing shortfalls.

So what's your take on statewide legislation that preempts local zoning? And what do you suspect are some variables that would indicate whether this would be a viable approach in your state?

Katherine Levine-Einstein: I'm really into state level preemption in part, because I think it makes the development pressure it's more evenly spread, right.

And more spread to exclusionary places. And so we can think about places like Minneapolis, they went out on their own and they abolished [00:37:00] single family zoning and that's awesome. But their surrounding suburban communities haven't done that. Right. And so that essentially does, is it concentrates a lot of development in the city.

And it means that some of the places that have, you know, the highly ranked school districts get to stay exclusionary. And so I think we don't want to rely solely on a process that involves the most progressive places saying, sure, we'll let more housing get built here, while exclusionary places get to stay exclusionary.

And I say this for two reasons, one it's unjust because it makes it harder to access the really high quality public goods, the top rated schools in many places. Right. And so that's, that's I think a deep problem. I think the second issue though, with having that kind of uneven development pressure is it can lead to gentrification and displacement, right.

That, you know, here in the Boston Metro area, an overwhelmingly amount of our development has been concentrated in the city of Boston because they haven't made it super easy to develop, but relative to the surrounding suburbs they've made it much easier to develop. And so what that means is they get all of the building.

And a lot of [00:38:00] people of color have been pushed out of their neighborhoods. And in contrast are like inner core streetcar suburbs with all that top ranked schools are just not doing their share and they're not going to voluntarily do their share. And so I think that's why we need the state to step in because otherwise a lot of places where that should be shouldering their development burdens just aren't going to do it.

Okay. So where can it happen? Right. Like. Oregon sort of a unicorn, right? Like California, I think has been the counterpoint to show us a place where everyone agrees that housing is a huge issue, but no one can seem to agree on what the  preemption legislative package should look like. Right.

Like we've seen many packages go through. And I think finally, now there's been a little bit more attraction. But that's been a really contentious issue in one that it's been really hard to get support from a bunch of different state legislators. So so I guess, yeah, my answer to how to get it done is we haven't really been able to get it done in a lot of places, right.

That Oregon is the most recent example where there's been real success. But in a [00:39:00] lot of other places like Massachusetts or California that has really pressing housing crises and very liberal state governments it's been really hard to do.

Kol Peterson:  Ironically though. I'd say it's, it was. Weirdly easier to pass a statewide legislative bill for, for what, just for the elements that occurred within the ADU portion of the bill for Oregon, which said no owner occupancy, no off street parking. Easier to pass at the statewide level than to try to do it in a given local jurisdiction.

So I think depending on how the bill is targeted and framed and how explicit or how minor it might seem, it actually might be easier to pass at the state level than  at the local level because of this dynamic that you've articulated so well, which empowers neighbors to have more voice than people who dedicate their profession to studying this issue who are more empowered at the state level. In other words, more [00:40:00] academics, more institutional voices that understand the statewide dynamics between supply and demand.  I wish I knew which states would be most ripe for that type of suggestion at this point.

Katherine Levine-Einstein:  I think the packaging really matters, that's a really important point. I think again about this Minneapolis example where they've gotten tons of attention for ending single family zoning at the same time that they did that they also abolished parking minimums, which like no one was really talking about because they were also distracted with the single family zoning, which is as much bigger, more contentious issue.

And I imagine in a lot of places, if you tried to abolish parking minimums, without  having a broader conversation, it would seem like a huge deal. And so, as you say, I think a lot of it is in the packaging. And whether you can make it seem like a minor little tweak to land use regulations or whether it sounds like the, a big deal that will get rid of all of our beautiful single family neighborhoods. I think that's  an important political point.

Kol Peterson: Awesome. Thanks, Katherine.

 So Kelsey let's I'll have you take it away.

 Kelcy King: That wraps up the interview portion of this [00:41:00] episode of the ADU hour. As a reminder, these episodes are the edited audio version of interviews that we conducted via a webinar series. Good news. You can access the full video series  via Kol's website, BuildinganADU.com. Now for the second half of the show I curate questions from the audience that gives our guests the opportunity to dive deeper into a topic or address new ideas and questions.

First we want to know what the podcast was that you heard, Kol.

Kol Peterson: Oh is maybe Catherine can speak better than me to this .

Katherine Levine-Einstein: It was with the it was The Weeds with Matt Yglesias, and I think it was in January, which feels like a lifetime ago that wasn't so long ago.

Kelcy King:  Thank you. This one's from Neil, are contemporary neighborhood defenders being honest in their community concerns, or could they be euphemisms in order to not say the more insidious intentions out loud?

Katherine Levine-Einstein: Oh, totally. Yeah. And the problem is right. Obviously we can't know that for [00:42:00] sure.  I can't mind read and see sort of what's inside someone's head and certainly not when I'm reading the meeting minutes. But sometimes,  people say that the quiet part, right? So there are times where you read through these meeting minutes and people say things that are, that are more explicit.

So one that really comes to mind for me, was one public meeting where someone talked about their lovely north shore town that's right on the ocean, say we don't want it to become another Chelsea, which is a town that is like six towns over majority Latino. And so it was very clear that the concern was that if you built this housing development, you would have Latino people moving in.

We also heard from someone who worked in the planning department in  another privileged community in the Boston area that sometimes the meeting minutes actually gets scrubbed when someone says something that's incredibly racist. And so I can't speak to that, I haven't seen it personally.

That's all to say, I think those sentiments are very much out there and there's also a really strong incentive on the part of both individuals who are trying to be persuasive and also governments to not [00:43:00] have those be in official documents. So yeah, very much still there.

Kelcy King: Melissa wants to know, with your research, is it better to ask for more units, say 10 versus four, so that after it's all said and done going from 10 to four, rather going from four to three.

Katherine Levine-Einstein: You know, I can't say that for sure.  I would love to partner with a developer where we experiment and try a few different developments to see how this plays out. But in interviews with developers, a lot of them will say that they shoot high in their initial ask, so that then when they're like, oh yeah, we're going from 10 to four that were so reasonable.

We're cooperating. Right. And I think, again, this is another cost of these land use regulations is if you're a property owner or developer, you have to guess, right. You have to sort of say, okay, what's the too high number to shoot for us that I can eventually end up with the optimal number of units for me.

Yeah.

Kelcy King: Great. Thank you. Is it possible for local jurisdictions to take the state to court on state level preemptions?

Katherine Levine-Einstein:  That's a great question. I don't know about whether they can take them to [00:44:00] court. I know they can do lots of appeals and fight it. And I know that individuals have taken the state to court over preemption. More generally, one of the critiques of preemption laws has been that in practice, they don't produce more housing because they lead to more litigation. That has absolutely been the experience with Massachusetts' preemption law, chapter 40 B, which has been around since the 1990's. And  it's unclear what the longterm effects have been on housing supply.

There's been sort of mixed studies on this, but there have absolutely been a lot of lawsuits about it. So I think it is definitely something that folks have to be prepared for when you pass these kinds of laws, that there is litigation around it.

Kelcy King:  Once land regulations are set development should be by right, but how do you deal with design and design compatibility with an existing historic neighborhoods?.

Katherine Levine-Einstein: Historic neighborhoods are really interesting ones. Because it's funny when you read sort of be an economist who studied land use regulations, they hate historic preservation. I think if you were to sort of say, like, what is the thing that they would most love to get rid of?

They sort of look at these historic districts and say that the, when [00:45:00] we have those regulations, we make it harder to build. And yeah, I think those are  that would sort of be the hard party line. I think it's challenging though, because when we look at what we  love about many of our Americans cities, we love  some of the pretty old preserve neighborhoods.

So yeah, I think you've highlighted a really tricky trade-off when we have regulations that preserve our communities,  we make it harder to build and we make it more expensive to build. And in some cases that may be worth doing but not always . Like I think we have to sit or yeah, balance the need for more housing, with the need to preserve some of our some of our treasured neighborhoods.

I think the second place I want to flag that with historic preservation is again, this equity concern in a lot of American cities, the old neighborhoods that are historic preservation areas are also the rich areas. And so they provide this tool for affluent areas to say, oh, you can't develop here look at all these pretty Victorian houses. Why don't you go develop over there? And the other part of the city, which happens to be where poor people and people of color live. And so I think that's one of the tools that has led to incredible [00:46:00] inequities in where development happens.

Kol Peterson:  I want to make comments last question, which is what if as a general operating principle, the higher priced land value areas were required to have the most liberal regulations for housing development.

Katherine Levine-Einstein: I think it would solve a lot of the gentrification displacement concerns. And again, if you look at California, one of the big issues has been that in Los Angeles a lot of local  low-income communities of color  have borne the brunt of development pressures there and it turns out that those are also the areas that have been upzoned more frequently . And so I do think something that, that rectified that inequity would certainly be something I support. I think it would be very politically difficult to pass because the most powerful areas are the ones that are protected by these regulations.

Kol Peterson: But its precisely where we, we need development, right. I mean, those areas,  in general, going to be the areas where the most transit oriented, most desirable places and [00:47:00] where these kinds of projects could pencil out, it would make sense for the community if they were allowed.

Kelcy King:  In addition to building smaller footprint ADU's, how can we also get people to build smaller main homes versus mega mansions?

Katherine Levine-Einstein: This is again, one of the issues that people raised in the town that I live in, when you try to sort of reform zoning and land for more multi-family housing.

One of the issues that gets conflated is people say, well, you know, there's been so many tear downs as small houses to build these mega mansions. And so when we loosened zoning, how do we prevent all the housing from becoming less affordable? You know, I don't know that I have a good answer because I always worry when you add in more regulations, we're just going to make it more expensive to build.

But I definitely share the questioner's concern about about replacing a small single family home with a big single family home, I guess I would say we should replace that small single family home with like a couple of homes or a townhouse, if we can, if the lot's big enough in supports that use.

Kelcy King: Great. Thank you. Are you aware of any research that shows the relationship between increased housing price  and decreased [00:48:00] quality of living?

Katherine Levine-Einstein: Hmm, interesting. So yes, I think there's a lot of research that shows when your housing gets more expensive, life becomes more terrible at a variety of dimensions.

And so when we have higher costs of living, I think  if you want the most direct measure of quality of living health, right, your health, your stress, we know that if you're in a more expensive housing market, and if your housing itself is more expensive, you experience more stress, you experience all these negative physical outcomes .

You're more likely to be faced with a crazy long commute which is terrible for a whole host of reasons.  So I think there's a lot of ways in which being stuck in an expensive housing market makes your life worse.