Location: United States

Across much of the United States, zoning laws — the regulations that dictate what can be built and how land can be used — only allow for single-family homes, preventing the development of denser housing like apartment buildings. This dramatically decreases the amount of housing available and increases home prices and rent.[55,56]

Despite zoning’s importance, information on zoning policies is largely inaccessible to the public.

The National Zoning Atlas (NZA), a project of the nonprofit Land Use Atlas, creates tools for advocates and policymakers. Its interactive map, which aims to cover over 33,000 jurisdictions in the United States, allows users to see their local zoning laws and statewide regulations.

To ensure data is actionable, the NZA publishes insights from their analysis and works with advocates to support local outreach.

The NZA recently released a report[1] showing that New York City could lose almost 20,000 units of housing due to flooding and needs to double the current zoning capacity to meet housing demands as a result.

In Montana, a bipartisan coalition used NZA tools to convince the state legislature to pass reforms to increase the supply of multifamily housing units and thus increase affordable housing.

In Texas, advocates used NZA data to pass statewide legislation expanding zoning for manufactured housing, one of the most affordable housing types.

Learn more: https://www.zoningatlas.org/Le

In Texas, West Street Recovery uses participatory research methods to release reports and advocate for better disaster resilience policy. Lower Sioux Indian Community Hempcrete Program and Housing Project, Rural Homes, and Build Up Nepal build affordable housing for their communities.