Set rules democratically
Communities adopt clear standards for safety, form, access, and infrastructure.
06
Faster approvals
Set clear rules—and say yes on time
Debate the rules in public. Then approve homes that follow them without years of hearings, bargaining, appeals, and delay.
In plain English
Debate and adopt the rules in public, then approve individual homes that follow those rules without making every project repeat the political process.
How it works
Remove the barrier. Let homes respond.
Approve compliant homes
Projects meeting those standards receive administrative approval on a known timeline.
Reduce risk
Less delay and uncertainty makes more projects—and especially smaller projects—financially feasible.
The implementation test
Real reform or paper promise?
By-right approval does not eliminate public standards. It replaces subjective, project-by-project discretion with objective rules adopted ahead of time.
TestStrongWeak or symbolic
Standards
StrongA reasonable applicant can tell whether a project complies.
Weak or symbolicApproval depends on vague compatibility findings.
Time
StrongReviews have published steps and enforceable deadlines.
Weak or symbolicAgencies can restart or extend review indefinitely.
Appeals
StrongAppeals address actual legal errors.
Weak or symbolicOpponents can relitigate a compliant project's merits.
Pair it with
- Online permit tracking
- Adequate planning staff
- Coordinated utility review
- Fee transparency
Measure whether it works
- Median approval time
- Approval-rate variation
- Carrying costs
- Share of applications receiving one complete review
In practice
What this reform looks like on the ground.
Austin, TexasMay 20, 2019
Affordability Unlocked
Austin created a voluntary citywide density-bonus program for qualifying affordable-housing developments, with certification connecting eligibility to development review.
Lesson
Austin Affordability Unlocked ordinance ↗ (opens in a new tab)A legal path matters only if people can use it. Track the whole trip from certification to permit to construction to an occupied home.
Why support it?
The evidence behind the solution.
Emerging evidence
Set the rules once. Stop retrying every home.
California's SB 35 gave qualifying projects a faster, more certain path than years of discretionary review. Affordable-housing builders became some of its most visible users.
Keep in mind: The available studies are implementation reports, not causal estimates. Proposed homes may not be completed, projects self-select into the program, and local economics still determine whether a legal path produces housing.
Strong evidence
A city cannot build homes it has made illegal.
Legalize real projects across enough land and builders respond. Auckland did this at city scale and saw a large permitting boom; narrower reforms have usually delivered less.
Keep in mind: Permission is necessary but not sufficient. Financing, land, construction costs, approval time, and demand determine whether newly legal homes are actually built.
Strong evidence
Legal on paper is not the same as buildable in practice.
A reform can promise density and still bury it under tiny maps, parking ratios, setbacks, fees, hearings, and delay. Good reform makes ordinary projects legal, feasible, and predictable.
Keep in mind: Chicago's narrow reform produced no detectable building increase in its early years. That helps show why scale, feasibility, and follow-through matter.
Established evidence
Scarcity turns neighbors into bidders.
When more households want in than there are homes available, the highest bidders win. Everyone else pays more, accepts less, moves farther away, doubles up, or leaves.
Keep in mind: Construction costs, incomes, interest rates, amenities, and migration matter too. Housing supply is not the only force—it is the part local policy can directly obstruct or enable.
Figure 2 · Living space after upzoning
The strongest post-reform increases appear after roughly five years, especially for large upzonings.
Figure 6 · Estimated treatment effects on dwelling permits
The estimated effects become positive after the reform for both attached and detached homes.
