Incentivizing Housing Production: State Laws from Across the Country to Encourage or Require Municipal Action

Authors: Shazia Manji, Truman Braslaw, Chae Kim, Elizabeth Kneebone*, Carolina Reid | TERNER CENTER

Yonah Freemark | URBAN INSTITUTE

This paper from the Terner Center and Urban Institute presents new tools to better understand how states have approached driving local action on housing production. Incentivizing Housing Production: State Laws to Encourage or Require Municipal Action develops a new typology to classify these approaches—from plans and state standards to carrots and sticks—and applies that typology to the first nationwide database of 144 pro-housing laws. The paper finds that laws often employ more than one policy lever or goal, and that many laws were iteratively developed over multiple legislative sessions.

Read the full paper Incentivizing Housing Production here.

Find a summary blog post here.

*Note: Prior to publication, Elizabeth Kneebone transitioned to the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. The views expressed in this report do not necessarily represent the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco or the Federal Reserve System.