The vast majority of Americans support housing policies that are widely illegal

People walk past brownstone townhouses in the Fort Greene neighborhood on June 24, 2016 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

• The US is short millions of homes, contributing to sky-high rent and housing prices. 
• Restrictive zoning has made it illegal to build dense, mixed-use neighborhoods in many places. 
• The American public wants policymakers to do something about it, according to new polling. 

Urbanist Twitter has a favorite meme pointing out how nonsensical American urban planning can be. It started when one account posted an image of a downtown street in the cartoon sitcom Bob’s Burgers and wrote, “This kind of smart, walkable, mixed-use urbanism is illegal to build in most American cities.” The viral phrase has since been repeated ad nauseam and spawned countless parodies.

But there’s a nugget of truth in the silly message.

Single-family zoning dominates even the densest US cities. Townhomes, apartment buildings, and even duplexes are illegal to build in vast swaths of urban residential neighborhoods that are instead reserved for lower-density detached houses. About 75% of residentially-zoned land prohibits anything but single-family homes.

Homes are often not allowed near shops, restaurants, and grocery stores. Restrictive land use laws have helped create a US housing shortage of somewhere around six million units. And as home prices and rents become increasingly unaffordable, the American public is starting to take issue with policies that restrict housing.

Large majorities say they support policies that would facilitate more — and denser — housing, according to a Pew Research survey conducted in September and published last week. The survey asked respondents about 10 different pro-housing policies. The most popular included streamlining the permitting process; legalizing apartments in commercial areas and near transit; allowing basements, garages, and attics to be turned into accessory dwelling units; and allowing student housing and affordable homes on property owned by non-profits, including churches. The least popular policy — which got 49% support — involved allowing smaller home lot sizes.

Most American cities and states make the building approval process excruciatingly slow, and don’t allow the kind of density these policies would promote.

Notably, support for pro-housing policies also crossed partisan and demographic lines. Majorities of Republicans, Democrats, and independents supported the eight most popular policies. And majorities of both renters and homeowners supported nine of the 10 policies.

The survey data aligns with the growing popularity of YIMBYism, the pro-building “yes in my backyard” philosophy, which advocates abundant housing to bring down costs. States across the country, including California, Washington, Montana, and Maine, have passed housing policies similar to some of those described in the Pew poll.

California, which is experiencing one of the country’s worst housing crises, has become something of a national model, passing policies ranging from streamlining the building approval process to legalizing housing in church parking lots.

Red states are also looking to boost housing construction. Montana recently passed a slew of laws loosening zoning regulations, including to allow multi-family buildings and mixed-use development in commercial areas.

The poll’s findings come amid rising concerns about homelessness and high housing costs. Two-thirds of Americans say it’s hard to find an affordable home where they live, according to a recent YouGov poll. Homelessness is on the rise and a growing share of Americans are rent-burdened or can’t afford to buy a home. About three-quarters of respondents in a June Bipartisan Policy Center/Morning Consult poll said that a lack of affordable housing is a problem, and that insufficient home supply has contributed to higher housing costs.