The swift about-face of Gainesville's plan to end single-family zoning shows that pro-housing advocates still face tough local battles.
Just hours after being sworn in, commissioners in the Florida college town of Gainesville voted to reverse a zoning plan that sought to increase housing supply in the city. That plan, passed by a lame duck city commission in August, had made Gainesville the first city in Florida to eliminate single-family only zoning citywide.
Gainesville has long been a liberal enclave in an increasingly red Florida, but the zoning plan drew the ire of many local residents and caught the attention of Republican state leaders, who threatened state preemption and legal challenges in the wake of its passage late last year. Now local Democrats are poised to repeal the plan before it can be implemented.
The move cuts against recent trends of liberalizing zoning in many Democratic US cities, and recently in smaller southern cities like Decatur, Georgia. Gainesville’s setback may hold lessons for “Yes in My Backyard” (YIMBY) advocacy efforts as they expand beyond some of the nation’s largest and bluest cities and states.
Pro-housing groups have been pushing for zoning reform to combat rising housing costs and redress entrenched racial segregation. Blue states like California and Oregon, as well as cities from Minneapolis to Spokane, have passed bills to allow for denser housing. Once such reforms have been passed, it’s exceedingly rare for cities to go the other way and reinstate exclusionary zoning policies like Gainesville is prepared to do, according to land use expert Nolan Gray (a Bloomberg CityLab contributor).
In Gainesville, upzoning single-family neighborhoods citywide to allow for duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes became a lightning rod for frustrations about rising costs and neighborhood change in the rapidly growing midsized city. The ordinances faced a great deal of backlash when they passed last year, but pro-housing groups and officials are surprised by how swiftly the reforms were undone.
“You guys are on the wrong side of history here,” said Jason Sanchez of Gainesville Is For People, the local pro-housing group backing the plan.
Opponents of zoning reform say that the plan was too unpopular to stomach. Last summer, residents loudly expressed concerns about threats to property values, influxes of students into family neighborhoods, a dearth of true affordability and accelerating gentrification in some of Gainesville’s predominantly Black neighborhoods. At city commission hearings, in the Gainesville Sun’s opinion pages and on the “Save Gainesville” Facebook page, residents panned the zoning changes, calling them a “costly ill-conceived boondoggle,” “unconscionable” and “possibly catastrophic.”
Gainesville is For People emphasized that modest increases in permitted density were not as radical as the public discourse suggested. “I don't quite understand why it’s a contentious issue. It should be a quiet thing; it’s frankly kinda boring,” said Sanchez.
Far from quiet, the issue became the focus of the city’s fall election. Harvey Ward was one of the commissioners who voted against the plan last year. “We did it without bringing the community along,” said Ward. Emphasizing that the zoning changes were misguided but ultimately well-intentioned, Ward has advocated for a neighborhood planning approach, rather than blanket changes to the city zoning code. That stance, and a promise of repeal, helped him ascend to the mayor’s office this January.
“This was my fourth campaign for office. I’ve never, unfortunately, seen something that was [so] widely unpopular on the doorsteps,” said Mayor Ward. That opposition, Ward says, came from all corners of Gainesville: owners and renters, young and old people, Black and white residents.
As a result, an initiative aiming to rectify historically anti-Black housing policy was defeated, in part, because it drew vocal criticism from some of the city’s prominent Black voices, like Commissioner Cynthia Chestnut, who led the motion to repeal. In comment before the city commission, Black residents, long locked out of homeownership in the US, expressed fears that the ordinances threatened hard-earned equity in their homes.
Despite the strong pushback from many Gainesville residents, last year’s commission was confident they had gotten the policy right.
‘The narrative had already been written’
Supporters wish they’d gotten a bigger head start on organizing. Gainesville found itself in an envious political position last year: committed to taking action on housing and possessing the votes to do so. But the city had no established pro-housing organizing infrastructure. When Gainesville is For People formed in 2022, the city had already waded into a community engagement process for zoning reform.
“We did have a pro-housing advocacy group form, but it was very late in the process. As much as they tried to make an impact, the narrative had really already been written,“ said former Mayor Lauren Poe, who championed the zoning reform effort last year.
Supporters also lamented alarmist messaging that they feel contributed to the plan’s defeat. “The scare tactics on the other side kinda convinced people that large student-oriented apartment complexes were going to go up and their single-family neighborhood to single-family homes would no longer be legal, that no more single-family homes will be built,” said Poe. “And with that level of misinformation out there, it's really tough to counter.”
In Decatur, Georgia, where the city commission recently took the first step toward a similar blanket upzoning, city commissioner Lesa Mayer heard arguments about property values and crime. “I think that it's time for us to be very clear on the fact that most of those positions are rooted in unconscious bias and systemic racism, period,” said Mayer.
Just what to call the changes to single-family neighborhoods — “eliminating single-family zoning,” “housing diversity” or “missing middle housing,” to name a few options — has been hotly debated by advocates and opponents of zoning reform.
Decatur’s pro-housing coalition, including Mayer and the Coalition for a Diverse DeKalb, are trying different messaging than Gainesville’s campaign to “end exclusionary zoning.” While not shying away from zoning’s racist history, Mayer emphasized offering residents a range of housing options.
“Talking about housing diversity is a better approach because if we can’t guarantee affordability of every unit, then it really doesn't need to be an affordable housing conversation. It can be a component of affordable housing conversation, but it can’t be the conversation,” said Mayer.
In Gainesville, repealing the zoning reform plan requires a second, largely procedural vote in the coming weeks. All parties expect the repeal to proceed.
Jason Sanchez doesn’t think this setback in Gainesville will slow YIMBY momentum in Florida and elsewhere across the country. “In Florida we’ve had new groups pop up, so it’s kind of exciting,” he said. “We’ve got Orlando, St. Petersburg, Tampa and Miami.”
Mayor Ward hasn’t ruled out passing some of the plan’s policies, such as lot splitting, individually. And former Mayor Poe still has hope Gainesville will come around. “Any systemic change will be controversial,” he said. “And that is not enough reason to abandon it.”
