Too many conservatives believe local government zoning reform — perhaps the kind of state reform Utah’s governor has been talking about — is a liberal plot.
Instead, if done correctly, it could restore property rights and basic freedoms, two things that perk ears on the right.
That was the gist of an essay published a few years ago by the free-market-promoting Cato Institute, written by Vanessa Brown Calder, who at the time was director of opportunity and family policy studies at the think tank.
“Conservatives may not realize just how far American property rights have already eroded, but no doubt a quick glance at their local zoning code will remedy that,” Calder wrote.
In Utah, meanwhile, Gov. Spencer Cox recently told the Deseret News he wants the state to get more aggressive in tackling its housing shortage.
These could include “pre-emptions,” where the state forces local governments to allow housing projects that meet certain requirements. It also might include statewide zoning reform.
Blame government regulations
Cox told the 2025 Ivory Prize Summit, an event honoring innovations in affordable housing, that there would be no housing problem if there were “no government regulations whatsoever.”
He also cited Texas as a good example of a place that honors property rights.
Utah — the fastest growing state during the decade of the teens and still among the fastest, with a 1.5% growth rate in 2024 — is projected to come up 235,000 homes short of the demand needed to meet the state’s growth by 2055, if current trends continue. That’s according to a study by Envision Utah and the Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity.
Scarcity leads to price increases. Zillow reports that the typical home in Salt Lake County was worth $563,228 as of Sept. 30, which was 2% higher than a year earlier.
By comparison, a typical house in Houston was worth $262,302 and was 3.2% cheaper than a year earlier. Houston has never had a zoning ordinance.
Life without zoning
But before you carry this comparison too far, there are other factors of which to be aware. As an in-depth story on Houstonlanding.org recently reported, the absence of zoning doesn’t necessarily mean landowners are free to do as they please. Houston has regulations that “protect neighborhoods from incompatible development, such as hotel/motel, cell towers and high-density development,” the publication said.
Wealthier neighborhoods in Houston have deed restrictions that limit what can be built in their neighborhoods. The city has the power to enforce these restrictions.
Houston Landing said this is one reason why “industry historically has been built in lower-income communities of color in Houston.” That’s according to Robert Bullard, founding director of the Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice.
Deed restrictions are supposed to keep chemical plants from locating next to subdivisions, for example.
“In practice, we see it mostly enforced in more affluent areas where deed restrictions are renewable,” Bullard told the publication. “Other times, in neighborhoods of color, the deed restrictions have been allowed to lapse over time and industry can come in.”
There might be a happy medium between too much zoning and none at all.
Zoning reform?
In Utah, where the governor has a goal of seeing 35,000 new starter homes and 150,000 new homes overall built by the end of 2028, Rep. Ray Ward, R-Bountiful, is sponsoring a bill to speed up the process. It would create a new statewide default zone allowing city councils to supersede current ordinances and allow houses on one-eighth-acre lots.
City councils would have to take an official vote to reject such developments.
It might speed construction, but this idea also might be a hard sell in a Legislature dominated by conservatives who place a high value on the kind of local control that lets cities decide for themselves how they want to look. They might see zoning reform as more of a leftist solution than one protecting property rights.
I see two sides to this. One is that the state needs to address runaway housing costs that price young families out of the market. A good share of this is caused by scarcity and zoning restrictions.
But the other side is the danger of becoming too eager to boost construction through zoning reform. Housing projects may be approved with lax oversight, something one suburban planner has told me may already be happening in some places. Cities may lose control of their planning goals.
Finally, many local politicians fear they won’t be re-elected if they support too much high-density or starter home construction, even if the state is forcing it on them. That’s a hurdle the state government ultimately may have a hard time clearing.