How the Backlash to the Great Migration Explains High Housing Costs Today

• In Event: Land Use Policies, Local Boundaries, and Neighborhood Inequalities

Abstract

High housing prices in many major cities reduce economic growth and drive inequality, disproportionately hurting the poor and people of color. Scholars have identified laws restricting the use of land, particularly for high-density residential development, as the primary cause of high housing costs. I show that these laws were enacted by cities in response to black migration and subsequent white flight in the 1960s and 1970s. Leveraging exogenous push and pull factors for black migration to Northern and Western cities, I find that central cities that receive more black migration are 1) more likely to ban high-density uses, 2) produce fewer new units of housing in the coming decades, and 3) have higher housing prices today. The magnitude of the effect of migration patterns on prices outweigh other explanations, such as geographical constraints. I explain the persistence of these laws by showing that they created policy feedbacks through increased homeownership rates among whites.

Author

• Alexander Laurence Sahn, University of California, Berkeley