New BU Research Examines Who Speaks Up About Housing Development

New research from Boston University shows that local political participation in housing and development policy is dominated by individuals who are older, male, longtime residents, voters in local elections and homeowners. Moreover, the research finds, these individuals overwhelmingly oppose new housing construction. The authors of the study conclude that these participatory inequalities may be contributing to rising housing costs.

The study compiled and coded data from 97 Massachusetts cities and towns and their respective zoning and planning board meetings. The authors then matched thousands of individual participants to the state voting file to explore who participates in local political meetings. The data is the first comprehensive effort to measure the behavior of community meeting participants.

Specifically, the research revealed that two-thirds of meeting participants speak out in opposition to new housing development. Also, a “sizable minority of meeting participants—especially housing opponents—are repeat participators who attend multiple meeting to speak out about local housing projects.” According to the authors, these results suggest “that the structure of public meetings surrounding housing development likely contributes to a failure in many locations to produce a sufficient housing supply.” Ultimately, the authors argue, “even in areas where public opinion broadly favors redressing housing shortages with increased supply, specific housing development proposals will disproportionately garner opposition that is empowered by local institutions.” In short, “in the housing policy arena, institutions and behavior align in a way that enable non-majoritarian outcomes…”

The research also examined reasons expressed for supporting and opposing development. The authors found that “supporters of new housing were significantly more likely to mention affordability concerns. Opponents, in contrast, were more likely to raise traffic, environmental, flooding, and safety concerns.”

In the end, the authors contend, biased opposition to housing reduces the overall housing supply in cities that are desperate for more housing. While the authors concede that, “while one unit is obviously not going to have a significant impact on a city’s overall housing supply,” they point to the compounding of this result and that the “process repeating itself hundreds of times starts to have a marked influence on housing availability.” Moreover, the authors argue, “anticipation of this process might deter meritorious projects from even being proposed and/or push the proposals that are made in the direction of more expensive, higher end, units to make the economics work.”

The authors of the paper are Assistant Professors of Political Science at Boston University, Katherine Levine Einstein, Maxwell Palmer, and David Glick.

Read “Who Participates in Local Government? Evidence from Meeting Minutes," HERE