Housing Policy

State vs. Local, State vs. State

A popular revolt against state-led zoning reform in Colorado, Massachusetts' contradictory approach to housing supply, and how municipalities lobby to kill housing.

Christian Britschgi | 4.14.2026 4:20 PM

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Happy Tuesday, and welcome to another edition of Rent Free. This week, we look at a few stories that highlight the challenges and risks that come with attempting to reform local land use regulations at the state level.

Perhaps the major development in housing policy over the past five years has been state legislators' increasing willingness to intervene in heretofore mostly local zoning decisions, generally with the goal of making those zoning regulations less discretionary and less burdensome.

Rent Free Newsletter by Christian Britschgi. Get more of Christian's urban regulation, development, and zoning coverage.

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It once seemed radical when a state lawmaker would propose eliminating local parking minimums or requiring cities to permit multiunit housing in single-family neighborhoods.

Now, such legislation is routinely introduced and increasingly enacted into law.

To give one example, the Parking Reform Network, which advocates for eliminating laws that require that developments come with a minimum number of parking spaces, reports that three state-level parking reform bills were introduced in 2019 and one passed. As of 2026, 89 parking reform bills have been introduced, and 33 have passed.

Yet passing reforms on paper at the state level does not guarantee that local governments and local residents will eagerly comply with state-level deregulation.

One reason advocates support evolving housing policy from the local to the state level is their belief that state officials are more naturally pro-growth, and thus will support more liberal housing regulations.

Yet even where state officials have found religion on zoning reform, they will still go to bat for localities' power to impose other regulations that reduce housing construction.

Municipalities also operate powerful state-level lobbying operations to prevent reforms from passing in the first place that would reduce localities' powers to regulate land use. 

In Colorado, a Popular Rebellion Against Zoning Reform

Last Tuesday, voters in the Denver-area suburban community of Lakewood, Colorado, voted decisively to repeal a series of zoning amendments that had allowed denser housing to be built in more areas of the city, and with fewer required parking spaces.

As Denverite reports, the city's reforms had the support of the city's mayor, its city council, the local U.S. representative, and a long list of advocacy groups. But critics easily won the day with the argument that permitting more density citywide would "destroy" neighborhoods in the service of "corporate greed."

The preliminary results show that of the 35,000 people who participated in the special election, roughly 22,000 voted to repeal the city's reforms and return to the old, more restrictive zoning code.

The now-repealed zoning........

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