DS News
At an affordable housing conference in Atlanta this week, Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Ben Carson noted how addressing the affordability crisis will take “ingenuity and removal of barriers that restrict construction in cities across the nation,” AJC reports.
According to Secretary Carson, new building techniques such as modular construction and tiny houses must be embraced, and the country must incentivize development and relax land-use restrictions.
“Those are huge barriers,” Carson said. “When you look at some of the areas of the country where homelessness is the greatest, you see the greatest number of zoning restrictions.”
Carson stated that as HUD does not have the ability to change zoning, it will be working with Atlanta officials to loosen zoning laws. Atlanta, like many cities, devotes a large portion of their zoning to single-family only.
