Title: Understanding Exclusionary Zoning and Its Impact on Concentrated Poverty
Headings: Understanding Exclusionary Zoning and Its Impact on Concentrated Poverty
Understanding Exclusionary Zoning and Its Impact on Concentrated Poverty
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Where Did Exclusionary Zoning Come From?
What Does Exclusionary Zoning Look Like?
What Are the Impacts of Exclusionary Zoning?
What Are Perceived Justifications for Exclusionary Zoning?
What Has Been Done To Stop Exclusionary Zoning?
Elliott Anne Rigsby, Contributor

Content: Click the link to view an interactive map of the entire United States. Research shows that this concentrated poverty is on the rise. Since the 1990s, trends reducing the proportion of poor families living in neighborhoods with concentrated poverty have reversed, and experts blame public policy as the source. Exclusionary zoning is an oft-mentioned policy that keeps affordable housing out of neighborhoods through land use and building code requirements. It’s a legal practice that has been used for decades to keep lower-income people—disproportionately racial minorities—out of wealthy and middle-class neighborhoods across the country. It can have a damaging effect in that it prevents these low-income families from having access to the education and employment opportunities typically found in wealthier neighborhoods. Sign up for updates. Where Did Exclusionary Zoning Come From? Exclusionary zoning has existed in varying forms since the early decades of the twentieth century, when it was a vehicle for outright racial discrimination. Prior to the Supreme Court’s Buchanan v. Warley decision in 1917, city zoning ordinances across the country legally forbade minorities from occupying blocks where the majority of residents were white.