Regulatory Reform and Affordable Housing: Thirty-Years After the Kemp Commission’s Report on Regulatory Barriers

Regina C. Gray
Mark A. Reardon
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not represent the official positions or policies of the Office of Policy Development and Research (PD&R), the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), or the U.S. government.

In 1991, at the behest of U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) then-Secretary Jack Kemp, the Advisory Commission on Regulatory Barriers to Affordable Housing delivered a report on how land-use restrictions have worsened housing affordability. Secretary Kemp charged the commission to “explore the effect of the maze of federal, state, and local laws, regulations, ordinances, codes, and innumerable other measures that act as barriers to the development of affordable housing in appropriate places … (and) to catalogue the barriers, identify the sources of those barriers, and propose solutions.”