Kansas City’s housing cost rises as restrictive zoning, building regulations cost more | Opinion

Kansas City has long been known as an affordable place to live, but that advantage is slipping as restrictive zoning, excessive building regulations and organized opposition to new development drive up housing costs.

There are many contributors to high housing costs. They include restrictive zoning rules, building codes that often go beyond what is necessary for safety and public health and ever more expensive energy standards. Add to this organized groups of area homeowners bent on stopping any development, and it’s no wonder housing costs keep rising.

This dynamic isn’t unique to housing, but it’s particularly destructive in this realm. Political scientist Francis Fukuyama coined the term “vetocracy” to describe a system where many actors have the power to block change, even when broad consensus supports it. Emily Hamilton of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University was the first I know of to use the term in the context of housing policy. Describing the problem, she wrote: “Each discretionary step in the permit approval process contributes to the ‘vetocracy’ that stands in the way of new housing supply. Many bodies have the ability to delay or block new development.”

Raleigh, NC, solutions

This is exactly what former Raleigh, North Carolina, Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin saw in her city a few years ago. Raleigh relied on citizen advisory councils or CACs, funded and staffed with city resources, to meet with developers and report back to the City Council with their support or opposition. The city wasn’t obliged to follow CAC recommendations, but they carried a great deal of sway.

Baldwin notes that Raleigh’s first Black mayor, Clarence Lightner, established CACs in the early 1970s to ensure broader participation in city planning. Over time, however, these councils became dominated by older, whiter, wealthier homeowners, who used them as a tool to block new development — often in the unsupported belief that new housing would lower their property values.

San Francisco surveys skew

San Francisco offers another example of how organized opposition to new housing plays out. In a study of more than 42,000 public comments submitted to the city’s Planning Commission between 1998 and 2021, researcher Alexander Sahn found that public commenters were disproportionately older, whiter, wealthier and more often homeowners than the general population. Opponents of new housing were more likely to live near proposed developments, demonstrating that NIMBY — Not In My Backyard — attitudes drive turnout. Supporters, by contrast, were more evenly distributed across the city.

Sahn observed that white commenters and organized neighborhood groups, such as Raleigh’s CACs, had preferences more closely aligned with project approvals than other racial groups or interests. While 60% of comments across racial groups supported development, white residents’ preferences had the strongest correlation with what was ultimately approved.

To address this, Raleigh reformed its approach to community input. The city stripped CACs of their access to public funding and staffing, and removed the requirement that developers meet with them — though Baldwin tells me many still do. In their place, the city formed a Department of Community Engagement, aimed at collecting broader and more representative feedback without being beholden to CAC vetocrats.

But reforming the public comment process wasn’t enough. Raleigh also tackled one of the biggest barriers to new housing: zoning. City leaders loosened zoning restrictions to allow more “missing middle” housing — town houses, duplexes and small apartment buildings that fill the gap between single-family homes and large multifamily complexes. These kinds of homes, common in older parts of many urban environments such as my own Kansas City, have been prohibited in many areas for decades.

The impact has been significant. According to Raleigh Planning and Development Director Patrick Young, the city’s more permissive approach has led to more than 2,800 new housing units since 2021. “Raleigh has approved or permitted more units than any other city that made similar zoning reforms,” Young told The News & Observer. “That makes Raleigh’s program one of the most productive in the country.”

Raleigh’s experience holds a lesson for cities across the country. Public input matters, but it shouldn’t become just another tool for special interests to block progress. Reasonable regulation has its place, but it must not become a barrier to affordability. And for homeowners who often argue that government is the problem — I tend to agree. But we should also make sure we’re not part of the problem ourselves.

This story was originally published March 7, 2025 at 5:04 AM.