Repeal Zoning Regulations

Does this sound radical to you? If it does, the citizens of Houston, Texas must be extreme radicals. They have voted against referendums creating zoning regulations on three different years: 1948. 1962 and 1993. So clearly, they are happy without zoning regulations.
As a result, Huston’s homes have a price per square foot 6% lower than Jacksonville’s. This is despite having a 169% higher population density, which makes their land portion of their prices much high

————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————–

JacksonvilleHoustonHoust/Jacks
1Median of Sold Home Price$299,900$335,00012%
2Median Home Square Feet1,5951,89319%
3Median Sold Home Price per Sq Ft$188$177-6%
4Population Density per Square Mile1,3503,628169%

Source: Realtor.com:

1 to 3 Jacksonville  htps://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-search/Jacksonville_FL/overview

1 to 3 Houston https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-search/Houston_TX/overview

4 Source: World Population Review,  Jacksonville and Houston  https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities

Zoning Regulations increase the cost of building a home because of these requirements:

Residential zones require: (a) a minimum setbacks from the sidewalk, (b) a maximum number of units allowed per acres, and (c) maximum height restrictions.  All of these require developers to buy more land per home, increasing housing costs.

  • The complexity of zoning regulations requires the builders to hire experts to figure them out.  
  • The delays in responses from the City Administration on zoning questions extends the time that the builder has to be paying interest on a construction loan.
  • The cost of campaign contributions to City Counsel members to get them to look favorably at their application for a zoning variance with fewer restrictions.
  • The cost of a zoning regulation bureaucracy that increases home property taxes.

Supporters of zoning argue that it: (a) it keeps noisy and polluting businesses from residential areas, and (b) unstated, but implicit, is the NYMBY attitude of: “keep the rift-raft living in high-density small homes, condos or apartments from ruining our nice neighborhood and increasing traffic”.

  • It is just not right for the well-to-do to benefit by using their influence with the local government to deny people of more modest means the place to live at a lower cost.
  • Retail businesses do best in shopping centers on main thoroughfares, where the concentration of other businesses creates more customer traffic.  A shoe store fails in a residential neighborhood.
  • Heavy industries prefer locating in industrial parks that provide the streets and building designed for a factory or warehouse, closer to major roads and railroad tracks. This may not prevent some from locating near residential areas. But it can be prevented by a city rule requiring a minimum distance between them.  And this gives businesses a wider choice of locations than does zoning.

If you don’t believe this, just go to Google Satellite View and Street View, then fly over and drive around both Jacksonville and Houston to see which one looks more orderly. Or just remember that Houston voters have rejected referendums for zoning regulation three times.

The Duval Libertarian Party is an affiliate of the Libertarian Party of Florida. Libertarians believe in limited government and individual rights on all issues, such as civil liberties, the rights to property and trade, and the rights of all nations to be free of foreign interventions. We are the strongest supporters of all of the provisions to protect civil liberties and restrain government abuse that are in the US Constitution.