History and Background of the Topic
The urban neighborhoods of AmericaÆs major cities are deteriorating, trapping city residents in a cycle of poverty as jobs disappear and housing stock decays. In contrast, affluent suburbs are sprawling outward from the central cities, leading to the creation and maintenance of exclusionary enclaves in which predominately white, middle- to upper-middle class (and beyond) professionals are concentrated (State-sponsored growth..., 1127). In order to maintain homogeneity in such residential communities, zoning ordinances have been used which forbid multiple-family housing and require single-family housing to meet high minimum square footage requirements. By enacting this type of zoning ordinance, municipalities can effectively raise construction costs so that it is impossible to construct the kind of housing that may be affordable to lower-income families - let alone the most poor and needy (State-sponsored growth..., 1128).
Courts in the United States have reviewed zoning ordinances since cities first instituted zoning in the early 1900s, and exclusionary ordinances were invalidated as arbitrary and unreasonable as early as 1950 (State-sponsored growth..., 1127). Because of political opposition, a court may be the only institution that will act to punt an end to exclusionary zoning, but litigation is both an expensive and time-consuming solution to a problem that is all-too-common. The cost of litigation effectively deters many meritorious suits, and it has been found the enforcement of judicial doctrine takes place only to the extent that litigants challenge local ordinances (State-sponsored growth...,1129). Court-ordered relief tends to be piecemeal rather than planned. Because courts deal in individual rights rather than comprehensive plans or compromises, a consistent application of a judicial remedy takes on the characteristics of a blunt instrument. This creates enormous difficulti...