Cp removes state regulatory barriers, only states solve

Removing Regulatory Barriers at the Local, State, and Federal Level to Allow More Homes and Apartments to Be Built and Reduce the Time and Cost of Building If the nation, and state and local communities, are going to make significant progress in addressing housing affordability, one of the key policy levers is to reduce or remove regulatory barriers to building new homes and apartments. Work is underway in the private sector and the public sector to achieve better regulatory policies for housing affordability. An excellent example of private sector innovation is Symbium, located in San Francisco, which has developed a computational law platform that mechanizes the rules and regulations of a planning code, to help homeowners, design professionals, and planners quickly determine if an Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) is allowed on a property. Automating the legal analysis for the planning code enables anyone to access what is possible in a certain jurisdiction or on a given parcel, and it reduces the processing time from multiple months or weeks to an immediate response. This kind of computational capacity is an important breakthrough in reducing the administrative and regulatory barriers, and demonstrates the potential for other processing innovations related to planning and zoning. In the public sector, the City of Minneapolis and the State of Oregon have made important steps to break down the regulatory barriers to housing affordability by essentially eliminating single-family zoning. While nearly 75 percent of the housing in Minneapolis was previously zoned single-family, now, up to three units are allowed on any residential plot of land throughout the entire city. “By rezoning lots that currently accommodate only one single-family house to allow duplexes and triplexes,” says Andrea Brennan, Minneapolis’s Housing Policy and Development Director, “Minneapolis effectively triples the housing capacity of some neighborhoods.” In Oregon, the state legislature passed HB2001 in June 2019, with bipartisan support, historic legislation that effectively ended single-family zoning in the state. States hold the legal authority to establish the parameters for zoning at the local level, and the State of Oregon has made a bold move to assert that authority to encourage local jurisdictions to allow more housing to be built in their state.