Look at Zoning
May 29, 2025
By Ben Wolfenstein
Link to full article in The Illinois Times
The May 15 cover story talked at length of the segregation and exclusion faced by Black households in Springfield and throughout Illinois. Not once in the 3,971-word article was the word "zoning" used.
The "structural issues" referenced in the article begin with exclusionary zoning. U.S. zoning wasn't actually designed to keep residential areas away from factories, it originated as a way to keep Chinese immigrants out of certain areas of San Francisco and Jews out of Fifth Avenue in New York City.
After explicitly racial zoning was outlawed by the 1968 Fair Housing Act, cities found a workaround. Instead of banning Black people from white neighborhoods, they made it prohibitively expensive for modest to low-income households to move there by banning affordable housing types that used to be common, such as apartments, two- and three-flats or rowhouses. Only single-family homes on large lots would be allowed, creating a de facto wall to keep working-class families out of advantaged neighborhoods.
Zoning restrictions are the reason our cities are still segregated. This state-sponsored segregation limits families' abilities to move to opportunity, to be closer to jobs or in good school districts. According to the book
Excluded, the stricter the zoning, the higher the level of segregation. It's not just segregation and limited opportunity for people of color; zoning artificially restricts the overall number of homes, pushing up housing costs for all and driving inflation.
The good news is that two bills, HB 1813 and HB 1814, would begin to tear down these invisible walls that keep so many Illinoisians from creating better lives for themselves. They would legalize coach houses, townhouses, two, three- and four-flats in most communities, creating more affordable options in the places that need it most.
Ben Wolfenstein
Chicago
