Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego and the Phoenix City Council recently called on their suburban counterparts to “step up” and allow the construction of more housing. They were right to ask. For too long, Phoenix has almost single-handedly met the housing needs of the region. Using data from the National Zoning Atlas, Gallego noted that Phoenix permits multifamily development under existing regulations on 20% of its zoned land, whereas the figure for surrounding cities can be as little as 1%.
After Phoenix officials asserted their city had done more than its fair share, suburban cities and towns in Maricopa County countered that as a large city, Phoenix is better suited to offer affordable housing. Suburban residents invoked the need to preserve their town’s “character” and the desire for “local control” as justifications for limiting new housing.
The backlash to Mayor Gallego’s remarks is hardly unexpected.
Across the nation, similar disputes play out among city and suburban officials and their constituents as they seek to assign responsibility – for the problem or the fix – for a housing shortage that can no longer be ignored. A 2024 report from the Arizona State University Morrison Institute for Public Policy revealed that Arizona needs a staggering 270,000 more homes to meet current needs.
Single family zoning map of Maricopa County.
This shortage has significant negative effects on economic growth, including the ability of businesses to attract and retain employees and the ability of workers to comfortably provide for their own shelter and other needs. And the impact of housing-stifling zoning rules don’t just hit the communities that make the rules: they also affect their neighboring communities, in a highly interconnected region.
Arizona needs to address zoning issues
To address these issues, Arizona needs a sensible, data-driven discussion about zoning codes — the quiet, often invisible force behind it all.
As I argued in a recent book, zoning codes are one of the most powerful tools of local government, shaping our world. Yet whether a code is welcoming or restrictive is often buried in technical provisions about scale, density and housing types. The National Zoning Atlas translates these technical details for the public through an interactive map that, for the first time, makes information about zoning publicly accessible and enables apples-to-apples comparisons across communities.
The Atlas shows that, like many metro areas nationwide, permission to build multifamily housing clusters in and around the urban core in Phoenix, while surrounding suburbs such as Goodyear and Chandler stick to low-density, single-family development. In outlying communities, decisions often made by a relatively small pool of local voters end up dictating a community’s housing agenda, reflecting neighborhood priorities that may not align with regional or statewide needs.
Mulitfamily use zoning in Maricopa County
The Arizona Legislature has been debating what to do about zoning for years now. And there’s been some progress.
Starting this year, Arizona state law requires cities to publish annual housing assessments, which will require communities in Maricopa County to publicly reveal where they stand on housing production. The National Zoning Atlas previews that those assessments can’t sugar-coat the stark reality that too many have fallen short. A deeper dive into the data also reveals that the whole region is forced, through zoning, to expand outward into fragile ecosystems, destroying habitat and straining the water supply, and thereby undermining the long-term viability of the place millions call home.
During this session, legislators should roll up their sleeves and develop regulatory reforms that help us move beyond the blame game and toward the data-driven solutions Arizona’s housing crisis demands.
Sara Bronin, a Cornell University law professor, is founder and CEO of the National Zoning Atlas and the author of “Key to the City: How Zoning Shapes Our World.”
Sara Bronin
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