Rachel Bovard has written a piece at American Compass bouncing off Wells King (republished at New Urbs), both responding to the Trump-Carson op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, or AFFH. Trump and Carson boasted that they were repealing Obama-era rule and saving America’s suburbs from left-wing federal social engineering. King argued that this could prompt positive reform of an ossified and outdated zoning regime. Bovard argues that the AFFH was in fact federal social engineering, and that the suburbs should remain bastions of eventual homeownership for all Americans. But while her ostensible target is the AFFH, she repeats a few common misconceptions about what zoning reform and urbanism more generally might look like if more widely implemented.
For example, she argues that “high-rise apartment complexes” would “overrun” former single-family zones, and that because Americans tend to view home ownership as aspirational, we should not encourage too much density or non-single-family housing in the suburbs. She also seems to suggest that other forms of housing are more suited for rentals, and that ownership should be encouraged. These may or may not be arguments against the AFFH, but they misunderstand the broader urbanist cause.
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