A recent report from the Urban Land Institute highlights the land use tools available to state and local governments for expanding housing choice. The report suggests that states can promote sufficient housing development by encouraging local and regional authorities to engage in long-term planning and housing needs assessment, incentivizing municipalities to zone for new housing (for example, by authorizing local incentives to affordable housing developers or reducing regulatory red tape that increases building costs) and helping municipalities overcome unreasonable neighborhood opposition to affordable housing construction. A case study estimates that a Massachusetts state law that allows affordable housing developments to bypass some regulatory red tape has spurred development of 35,000 units affordable to low-income families since 1969.
North Carolina has currently some affordable housing legislation on the books, including the Affordable Housing/No Discrimination Act, which outlaws denying construction permitting based on the fact that a proposed development contains affordable housing units.
