RESOURCES

• Our Issue Brief about minimum lot sizes.

  • Highlight: If just 1% of CT land is rezoned under this proposal, we can create 185,000 homes at no cost to taxpayers.

• Recent doctoral research about the inequitable and economically detrimental impact of Connecticut’s lot sizes:

  • Highlight: “[R]eform halving minimum lot areas in CT… would substantially increase supply of small & cheap homes, benefit racial minorities, minimally affect existing home values."

• A study by Harvard researchers detailing how large lot size regulations increase housing costs.

  • Highlight: “One-acre increase in minimum lot size is associated with a 13 percent increase in housing prices, even for comparable house types.”

• A Journal of Urban Economics paper highlighting how lot size requirements deter developers and future homebuyers. 

  • Highlight: Data in the Boston area study suggests “that as the town increases the average lot size needed to build by one acre, the number of new permits declines by -0.4 log points, or about 40 percent.”

• A law review article outlining the regressive effects minimum lot size regulations have on our economy and environment.

  • Highlight: “Large lot zoning restrains landowners who wish to build, drives up the costs of housing by restricting supply, and pushes demand to suburban outskirts,” exacerbating sprawl. 

• A Forbes article demonstrating how exorbitant lot size requirements suppress economic growth.

  • Highlight: “Ultimately, the only way to keep housing affordable is to increase supply in high-demand areas. Minimum-lot-size regulations are just one of many regulations standing in the way.”

• An article by Yale Law professor taking a comparative approach to the history of lot size mandates and analyzes their effect on Greater New Haven neighborhoods. 

  • Highlight: “By national standards, lots of this size [in New Haven County] are remarkably spacious. The New Haven suburbs’ aversion to small house-lots pervades New England, and perhaps much of the Northeastern United States.”

• A Brookings study explaining how smaller lot sizes reduce the cost of buying a home. 

  • Highlight: “[I]n places where land is expensive, building multiple homes on a given lot is the most direct way to reduce housing costs, because it spreads the cost of land across multiple homes.”

• A Bloomberg article detailing how smaller lot sizes cost towns less in infrastructural resources than large lots. 

  • Highlight: “Compact development costs, on average, 38 percent less in up-front infrastructure than ‘conventional suburban development’ for things like roads, sewers and water lines.” 

• An Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development report highlighting the high cost due to urban sprawl to the public. 

  • Highlight: “The cost of providing schools, roads and utilities could be more than three times higher in areas where the density is low.”

• An Environment Colorado report demonstrating how sprawl hurts taxpayers and towns. 

  • Highlight: “Sprawl can inflate the costs of this new [water and sewer] infrastructure by 20 to 40 percent.”

• A research paper showing that larger lots separate people by race, and to a lesser extent, income.

  • Highlight: “[A]verage household income increases by 4.5% for a decrease in the density by one dwelling unit per acre.”

• A Journal of Planning Education & Research paper showing that the 1998 reform of minimum unit sizes in Houston resulted in new, more affordable developments.

  • Highlight: “The proliferation of 1,400 to 4,999 square feet lots between 1999 and 2016 in Houston reveals that there was substantial demand for dense residential housing in the city… [T]he 1998 subdivision reform has facilitated substantial infill development in many of the city’s neighborhoods, as old industrial parcels and single-family homes on 5,000 square feet lots have been converted into multiple townhouse-style developments.”