Is Snob Zoning America's New Redlining?

The Community's Conversation

Author Richard Kahlenberg’s new book offers an indictment of America’s housing policy by revealing the social engineering underlying our segregation by economic class, the social and political fallout that result, and what we can do about it.

His new book, Excluded: How Snob Zoning, NIMBYism, and Class Bias Build the Walls We Don’t See, published in 2023 by PublicAffairs, closely examines America’s “new redlining,” restrictive single-family zoning that carefully controls what types of housing can be built and where.

While ostensibly created to maintain good qualities in neighborhoods, single-family zoning has instead been used to steadily inflate property values and is greatly exacerbating America’s deepening housing crisis and economic inequality. Kahlenberg’s new book shows that housing choice has been socially engineered to the benefit of the affluent, and that the most restrictive zoning is often found in politically liberal cities where racial views are progressive.

We unpack the nationwide implications of single-family zoning and zoom in on Columbus for an exploration of how exclusive zoning in Central Ohio is shutting thousands out from the benefits of home ownership.

Featuring Richard D. Kahlenberg, Non-Resident Scholar, Center on Education and Workforce, McCourt School of Public Policy, Georgetown University, Senior Fellow, Progressive Policy Institute, Professorial Lecturer, Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration, George Washington University, and Author, Excluded: How Snob Zoning, NIMBYism, and Class Bias Build the Walls We Don’t See; Shayla Favor, Member, Columbus City Council; Tehani Mesa-Morales, SHRM-CP, Families Flourish Program Graduate, and Human Resources Generalist, ViaQuest, Inc.; and moderator Amy Klaben. President & CEO, Families Flourish.

This forum was sponsored by Central Ohio Community Improvement Corporation, The Robert Weiler Company, and Homeport. It was supported by The Ellis.

The forum livestream was presented by The Center for Human Kindness at The Columbus Foundation and The Columbus Dispatch.

It was recorded before a live audience at The Ellis in Columbus, Ohio's historic Italian Village on November 29, 2023.