Red Tape and Housing Costs: How Regulation Affects New Residential Development

by Michael Luger

Overview

Homeownership - a core American Dream - remains elusive to millions of families priced out of the unstable housing market. This book explores the delicate balance between regulations designed to promote the production of sound, affordable housing in safe community environments and the red tape in which housing developers become entangled.Based on case studies of communities in New Jersey and North Carolina, and building on extensive research on the housing development regulatory process, the authors examine the incidence of regulation and quantify the actual itemized costs of excessive regulation. How are the costs of excessive regulation distributed between developers and home buyers? How can state and local jurisdictions reform deeply entrenched regulatory systems to ease the delivery of affordable housing from developer to purchaser? Red Tape and Housing Costs examines the incidence of regulation. The distribution of these costs is critical to housing affordability. At the same time, developers shift to building housing for consumers to whom they can pass on the increasing costs of regulation. Michael I. Luger and Kenneth Temkin provide policymakers and housing advocates with hard facts and reasoned explanations about the link between excessive regulations and spiraling housing costs. The authors argue that their analysis will allow policymakers to launch efforts to create responsible housing development regulatory systems.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780882851686
Publisher:	Transaction Publishers
Publication date:	12/15/2000
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Michael I. Luger is director of the Manchester Business School (United Kingdom) and before that was professor of public policy, business, and planning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His work has appeared in numerous professional journals, including Small Business Economics, Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis, and Economic Development Quarterly. Kenneth Temkin is principal research associate at Optimal Solutions Group, LLC and previously was a research associate at the Urban Institute in Washington, DC. He has worked as a consultant for the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, The National Community Development Initiative, and The Ford Foundation.

Table of Contents

1: Motivation and Conceptual Framework; 2: Previous Studies About Regulation and Housing Costs; 3: The Regulatory Process in New Jersey and North Carolina; 4: Regulation and Residential Development in Practice; 5: The Cost and Incidence of Regulation; 6: Community Case Studies in New Jersey and North Carolina; 7: Implications for Policy

Editorial Reviews

[F]ocuses exclusively on New Jersey and North Carolina . . . The authors are particularly concerned that regulatory costs are most burdensome at the low, 'affordable' end of the housing market. Thus, their book might well be relevant outside of two Eastern-seaboard states. The underlying issues is whether too much planning and regulation can work against one common goal of planners and regulators—to make sure that everyone who wants to buy a home of his or her own has a chance to enter the market . . . [T]he authors have relied on more than one method—surveying regulators and developers, making a statistical analysis, and conducting case-study interviews in several jurisdictions in both states.” —Planning “Red Tape and Housing Costs is a useful contribution to the literature about the impact of regulation on housing. The focus is on New Jersey, but to help put the explorations into context, there is a comparison with development in North Carolina. The key policy question addresses 'whether there is ‘excessive’ or avoidable regulation that can be reduced or modified without compromising health, safety, and environmental quality' . . . [A]cademics, developers, and city officials will find substances that adds to the debate about the proper form and amount of development regulation.” —Richard B. Peiser, APA Journal "[A] wealth of information and depth of insight." —A. Shaburskis, Canadian Journal of Urban Research "Excels in its careful analysis." —K. McClure, Journal of Planning Education and Research

From the Publisher