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For decades, zoning has been a highly effective tool of exclusion. Though originally justified as a tool for separating incompatible land uses (like housing and polluting factories), zoning's most profound effect has been to segregate communities by income and race. Suburban jurisdictions in particular have used zoning powers to require minimum lot sizes, minimum home sizes and prohibitions on apartment buildings that make it next-to-impossible to build affordable housing in these communities. The result is a consistent, national pattern of large-lot, single-family-home enclaves that are off-limits to moderate, low- and very-low income families. As consequence, lower income families are cut off from strong schools, emerging job centers, and opportunity networks.
Inclusionary zoning reverses this trend by turning zoning into a tool for promoting mixed-income communities. IZ also allows innovative communities to counter declining public-sector investment in affordable housing, create housing for their workforce, and enable low- and moderate-income families to benefit from urban reinvestment.
Creating Mixed-Income, Diverse, Integrated Communities. IZ policies help build economically and racially integrated communities. The need for integration is great. People in poor neighborhoods are typically isolated from access to livable wage jobs, quality education, adequate health services, and protection from criminal activities. Persistently high unemployment can result in conditions in poor communities that are self-reproducing. When neighbors have no jobs or bad jobs, social networks are less helpful in connecting to available employment.
Mixed income communities broaden access to well-funded schools, strong municipal services and emerging job centers. Mixed income communities also provide openings through which low-wage earning families can buy homes in appreciating housing markets, accumulate wealth, and share a part of the American dream.
In order to foster mixed income communities, IZ policies must require developers to build the affordable housing units within the larger development , rather than developing affordable units offsite. Furthermore, most inclusionary zoning programs require external comparability between affordable and market-rate units so that lower-income families can purchase homes indistinguishable from the rest of the development. This has helped eliminate the harmful stigma that is so often attached to affordable housing.
Responding to the Affordable Housing Crisis with the Help of the Private Sector.
Millions of households pay too much for housing. Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies reports in The State of the Nation's Housing (2003) that more than 14 million households were found to be severely cost-burdened (defined as spending more than half of one's income on housing), and another 17.3 million are moderately cost-burdened (paying between 30 and 50 percent of income). Households in the lowest income quintile suffer the most. The National Low Income Housing Coalition's report Out of Reach 2003 found that wages continued to lose ground in 2003 compared to sharply rising rental costs.
As federal cutbacks reduce the resources available to nonprofit developers and public agencies for producing affordable housing, jurisdictions have used inclusionary zoning to bring private residential developers into efforts to solve the problem.
Asking private developers to share responsibility for creating affordable housing is both appropriate and crucial. M arket rate housing generates a need for affordable housing for janitors, public school teachers, civil servants, childcare workers, and others whose services are needed to support market rate unit occupants, but who earn too little to afford average priced homes in the community.
Providing Housing for
a Diverse Labor Force. A healthy community requires a diverse
labor pool, including professionals, service sector employees, public servants,
and others. In 
escalating
housing markets, lower-paid employees are the first to be driven out. Inclusionary
zoning helps build a diverse housing market, ensuring that lower income
individuals, whose housing needs are not met through the market, can live
in the community where they work. This helps attract and retain businesses
who know that holding on to good employees is easier when they can afford
to live within a reasonable commuting distance. Communities and regions
also benefit from a resulting reduction in commute times, air pollution
and congestion.
Protecting Against Displacement when New Investment Occurs . Inclusionary zoning policies are an effective tool for maintaining affordability in housing markets. In communities facing displacement or experiencing significant new investment, the housing market is often the most acutely impacted. As higher income individuals move into a neighborhood, housing prices rise, displacing low to moderate-income residents. In communities planning for new investment or already experiencing this pattern of displacement, IZ policies promote balanced housing development by ensuring that some portion of new housing development is affordable.
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