Reason TV: Should More Land Use Scholars Be Libertarians?

In a recent Washington Post
article, Ilya Somin responded to a provocative question raised
by liberal land use scholar
Kenneth Stahl. Given the failure of so many left-leaning land
use policies, Stahl wondered in
Concurring Opinions, “should more land use professors be
libertarians?” Somin, a libertarian land use scholar himself,
answered the question in the affirmative, pointing out that he and
other libertarian land use scholars have advocated government
protection of property rights over government planning for
years.

Reason TV’s Todd Krainin recently took a critical look at zoning
laws in Houston and Washington, DC, in a program called “Jay
Austin’s Beautiful, Illegal Tiny House.”

The original release date was August 7, 2014. The original
writeup is below.

Demand for housing in Washington, DC is going through the roof.
Over a thousand people move to the nation’s capital every month,
driving up the cost of housing, and turning the city into a
construction zone. Tower cranes rising high above the city streets
have become so common, they’re just part of the background.

But as fast as the cranes can rise, demand for housing has shot
up even faster, making DC among the most expensive cities in the
United States. With average home prices at $453 per square foot,
it’s every bit as expensive as New York City. And the struggles of
one homebuilder shows just why the city’s shortage looks to
continue for a long time.

“I got driven down the tiny house road because of affordability,
simplicity, sustainability, and then mobility,” says Jay Austin,
who designed a custom 140-square-foot house in Washington, DC.
Despite the miniscule size, his “Matchbox” house is stylish,
well-built, and it includes all the necessities (if not the
luxuries) of life: a bathroom, a shower, a modest kitchen, office
space, and a bedroom loft. There’s even a hot tub outside.

Clever design elements make the most of minimalism. The
Matchbox’s high ceilings, skylight, and wide windows make the small
space feel modern, uncluttered, and open.

At a cost that ranges from $10,000 to $50,000, tiny homes like
the Matchbox could help to ease the shortage of affordable housing
in the capital city. Heating and cooling costs are negligible.
Rainwater catchment systems help to make the homes self-sustaining.
They’re an attractive option to the very sort of residents who the
city attracts in abundance: single, young professionals without a
lot of stuff, who aren’t ready to take on a large mortgage.

But tiny houses come with one enormous catch: they’re illegal,
in violation of several codes in Washington DC’s Zoning Ordinance.
Among the many requirements in the 34 chapters and 600 pages of
code are mandates defining minimum lot size, room sizes, alleyway
widths, and “accessory dwelling units” that prevent tiny houses
from being anything more than a part-time residence.

That’s why Austin and his tiny house-dwelling neighbors at
Boneyard Studios don’t actually live in their own homes much of the
time. To skirt some of the zoning regulations, they’ve added wheels
to their homes, which reclassifies them as trailers – and subjects
them to regulation by the Department of Motor Vehicles. But current
law still requires them to either move their homes from time to
time, or keep permanent residences elsewhere.

The DC Office of Zoning, the Zoning Commission, the Zoning
Administrator, the Board of Zoning Adjustment, and the Office of
Planning all declined to comment on the laws that prevent citizens
from living in tiny houses. But their website offers a clue:

Outdated terms like telegraph office and tenement house still
reside in our regulations. Concepts like parking standards and
antenna regulations are based on 1950s technology, and new concepts
like sustainable development had not even been envisioned.

Complex as it is, the Zoning Ordinance of the District of
Columbia was approved in 1958. That’s over five decades of cultural
change and building innovations, like tiny houses, that the code
wasn’t designed to address.

Exemptions and alterations to the code are possible – many are
granted every year – but they don’t come cheaply. Lisa Sturtevant
of the National Housing Conference estimates that typical approvals
add up to $50,000 to the cost of a new single-family unit. That’s
why large, wealthy developers enjoy greater flexibility to build in
the city, but tiny house dwellers… not so much.

Fortunately, a comprehensive rewrite of the zoning code has been
in the works for much of the last decade. Efforts to allow more
affordable housing are underway, although many of these solutions
favor large developers. Future plans still forbid tiny houses.
Austin estimates that, given the current glacial pace of change
among the city’s many zoning committees, tiny houses are “many
years, if not decades out” from being allowed in the city.

For now, Jay Austin is allowed to build the home of his dreams –
he just can’t live there. The Matchbox has become a part-time
residence and a full-time showpiece. The community of tiny houses
at Boneyard Studios are periodically displayed to the public in the
hopes of changing a zoning authority that hasn’t updated a zoning
code in 56 years.

Runs about 10:30

Produced, shot, written, narrated, and edited by Todd
Krainin.