Political Institutions, Public Preferences, and Regulation of the Housing Supply in American Cities

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

Housing affordability and residential segregation rank among the most pressing domestic policy challenges in the United States. A growing body of research recognizes that housing outcomes are not simply products of market forces but are deeply shaped by political decisions—from zoning codes and permitting processes to legislative norms and public spending priorities. This panel brings together four papers that examine distinct political mechanisms governing housing supply and access, spanning public opinion, land use regulation, campaign finance, and local legislative institutions.

The first paper investigates whether Americans are willing to embrace a fundamentally different model of subsidized housing. Using a conjoint survey experiment with over 2,000 California adults, it estimates preferences across eight dimensions of social housing program design, testing whether the public would support a European-style cost-rental model that serves a broader income range and operates at greater scale than existing U.S. programs.

The second paper provides new empirical tests of councilor deference—the norm by which city councils defer to a district representative on localized land use decisions. Combining a survey experiment of over 350 local legislators with a redistricting-based identification strategy across 200 cities, it clarifies when this institutional norm constrains housing development.

The third paper examines the role of money in local housing politics. Assembling a novel dataset of over three million municipal campaign contributions, it uses generalized difference-in-differences designs to estimate the effect of real estate industry donations on housing permitting. The findings reveal that contributions increase multi-family permitting primarily in highly regulated cities, suggesting that donations reflect a regulatory environment channeling supply decisions through politics rather than markets.

The fourth paper turns to the downstream consequences of land use regulation for educational equity. Drawing on parcel-level data from the 25 largest U.S. metropolitan areas and leveraging changes in school attendance zone boundaries, it identifies how the built environment—shaped by zoning with segregationist origins—continues to drive racial segregation in public schools decades after Brown v. Board of Education.

Together, these papers advance our understanding of how political institutions mediate housing outcomes at multiple scales. They demonstrate that expanding housing supply and improving access require not only technical policy solutions but also attention to the preferences, incentives, and institutional rules that govern local decision-making. The panel offers implications for reformers seeking to address the housing crisis through changes to governance structures, regulatory frameworks, and program design.

Policy Area

• Housing, Community Development, and Urban Policy

Chair

• Michael C Lens, University of California - Los Angeles

Discussants

• Anna Weissman, Harvard University

• Adrian Conrad Pietrzak, Princeton University

Organizer

• Michael Hankinson, George Washington University

Individual Presentations

• Do Americans want European-style Social Housing? Survey evidence from California - Presenting Author: Paavo Herbert Monkkonen, University of California - Los Angeles

• Councilor Deference and the Local Housing Supply: Observational and Experimental Evidence - Presenting Author: Michael Hankinson, George Washington University

• Regulating the Growth Machine: Campaign Contributions, Zoning Environments, and Housing Supply in U.S. Cities - Presenting Author: Jennifer Gaudette, University of California, Riverside

• Single Family Schoolyards - Presenting Author: Stan Nguyen Oklobdzija, University of California, Riverside