The Arizona Legislature passed a law last session that allows some people to build backyard casitas, technically termed auxiliary dwelling units.
It didn’t take long for stories of neighborhood battles to begin. Homeowners devastated that their neighbors are building casitas overlooking their yards, concerned about their property values — it’s all “too close for comfort,” as one Valley mom told Arizona’s Family.
It’s a real pain point in communities for some neighbors, but housing advocates — and the lawmakers who passed the new regulations — did it to ease our state’s ongoing affordable housing crisis.
But, why does this really seem to touch a nerve for people?
The Show took that question to a big advocate for backyard casitas: Richard Kahlenberg, director of housing policy for the Progressive Policy Institute.
Conversation highlights
RICHARD KAHLENBERG: Well, people's homes are extremely important to them, and they see it as a place of, of refuge, a place to go relax. And so they care a lot about the environment around them. And the other factor here is people are naturally averse to change, worried about what will happen if something in their environment changes. And so we see massive amounts of resistance to even modest reforms in housing.
And those have happened all over the country, but you also in your work have traced them back to exclusionary and sometimes racist policies, in terms of restricted zoning.
KAHLENBERG: Yes. So ... if you look back at the history of zoning in America, you know, it starts out with a benign effort to separate industrial uses from residential uses. And that makes sense for for people's health and safety. But quickly it morphed into something much darker. And in many cities in the early 20th century, municipalities adopted racial zoning laws. And under those laws, Black people were not allowed by law to move into predominantly white neighborhoods.
And the same arguments that are sometimes used today to preserve zoning laws were used back then, including property values. Mayor of Baltimore said the reason we need to quarantine Black people to keep them separate from white people was to protect the property values of white homeowners.
There's also an irony here, because we see would often be called nimbyism ("Not in my backyard") in not just conservative places, but often in some of the most liberal cities in America.
KAHLENBERG: Yes. And as a, as a liberal myself, this was a disconcerting finding. But in fact, the research is very, very clear that the worst forms of exclusionary zoning are more prevalent in politically liberal areas. And the benign explanation for that is that liberals care about democracy, they care about the environment. And so, you know, some of these regulations were put in place to make sure that people had a say and how their community was going to change, efforts to protect the environment. But those have really been weaponized in recent years by highly educated people — many of whom are liberal — to exclude others who are of lesser means.
And ... I think that liberals have to, you know, we have to look to ourselves in the mirror on that question, and say, "Is there something really troubling going on with exclusionary zoning?"
Lots of the people who are mad about their neighbor building a large casita overlooking their backyard would say: "I'm not racist, and I'm not classist. I just think this is an intrusion." There's got to be something more on the human level that also seems to happen here.
KAHLENBERG: Well, absolutely. I mean, I think there are reasonable restrictions on, on what can be built in a particular community, and that those restrictions tend to go to, you know, issues of scale. How large are the units? And are these new units tastefully created or are they eyesores. Those kind of things are all legitimate to discuss and to, to debate. But too often the aesthetic argument, the argument about neighborhood character, is used as an excuse to, to exclude as well.
As we're watching these debates play out across the city of Phoenix, is this just a sticking point in a city's development? In a generation, will this be normal? Have we seen this and the result of it on the other side in other places?
KAHLENBERG: Yes, I mean, I think the the current path is is unsustainable. Housing has become unaffordable for, for young people ... They're delaying marriage, delaying family. They are, you know, people who are, by all measures, playing by the rules, doing everything that society asks them to, are still struggling. And that's at the middle and upper ends of the socio-economic spectrum. And then because there is not enough housing, we have a terrible challenge with homelessness. And that's not something that, that anyone in a society should want.
So, so people have to live somewhere. And when we restrict the supply of housing artificially, then it drives up the price of housing and and everyone suffers. So I think over the long haul, we will see a culture shift. And ironically, it's not kind of some brave new future, it's really return to what American society used to be like. There used to be a great heterogeneity in building types, and you had lots of row houses and duplexes and triplexes near single-family homes. And so allowing that, that diversity of types of home will allow greater economic and racial diversity in a community. And, and I think at the end, everyone will be better off.
As I said, change is hard in. In Minneapolis — which is one of the communities that kind of has been on the cutting edge of making reform — there was a lot of resistance initially to, you know, backyard units, accessory dwelling units. And, you know, one of the arguments made by a city council member was, "EWell, these are going to be houses of prostitution." Well, that, that didn't turn out to be true. And so, you know, as change came, Minneapolis was willing to make even even greater change. And so they've now eliminated the idea of exclusionary single-family zoning throughout the city. And so you can build a, a duplex or triplex anywhere in, in Minneapolis.
