Former President Donald Trump railed against the costs associated with zoning restrictions in a new interview, a notable shift from his past support for zoning to protect single-family housing.
The new remarks come amid a continuing housing supply shortage and as home costs have been pushed to new highs in recent years. In a wide-ranging interview, Trump characterized zoning regulations, which can add to the overall cost of building a home, as “a killer.”
Trump asserted to Bloomberg that 50% of housing costs today are attributable to regulations and zoning, both of which are mostly implemented at the state and local level.
“Your permits, your permitting process. Your zoning, if — and I went through years of zoning. Zoning is like … it’s a killer,” Trump said, according to a transcript of the interview. “But we’ll be doing that, and we’ll be bringing the price of housing down.”
But that is a departure from Trump on the matter of zoning during his first term in office, when he defended zoning and accused Democrats of waging a war on the suburbs.
The Trump administration had a mixed record on zoning and land-use restrictions. In 2018, then-Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson proposed overhauling an Obama-era fair housing rule, a change meant to use the rule to encourage housing supply and boost affordability.
As part of the Carson plan, funding would have been threatened if communities didn’t aim to lessen housing regulations. Carson argued that local zoning codes and land use regulations that make it harder to build have made housing more expensive.
But the Carson plan to rework the 2015 Obama-era fair housing rule, called Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing, was eventually pushed to the wayside by Trump, who seized on defending surburbia as a message in his reelection campaign.
Trump saw the push for more affordable housing through zoning changes as detrimental to single-family homes, which are the bedrock of suburban America.
“If the Left gains power, they will demolish the suburbs,” Trump said in his 2020 nomination acceptance speech.
But now, at a time when housing affordability is a major concern for voters, many of whom are holding off on buying a home, Trump appears to have endorsed loosening zoning regulations — although his recent comments don’t make it clear exactly what might be done through the executive branch to do so.
Republicans have long railed against the burden that regulations and red tape pose for home construction and, in turn, housing affordability. Trump suggested that such matters amount to about half of the cost of a home.
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A 2021 study by the National Association of Home Builders found that regulations imposed by the government at all levels account for 23.8% of the final price of a new single-family home built for sale. The average price of a new home at the time of the study was $394,300, and the group found that regulation accounted for $93,870 of the final house price at the time.
Economic research, however, suggests the biggest effect of zoning on housing prices is through raising the cost of land, a factor that isn’t reflected in the NAHB measure.
