Susan Pendergrass speaks with Show-Me Institute Director of Municipal Policy David Stokes about his new paper in the Free-Market Guide to Missouri Municipalities series on planning and zoning. They discuss how fragmentation among local governments can limit overly strict zoning, how zoning rules affect housing affordability, and why “last house syndrome” poses risks for Missouri’s future growth. From accessory dwelling units and minimum parking requirements to the debate over multifamily housing, Stokes explains how smart reforms can protect property rights and keep housing costs down.
Timestamps
00:00 Introduction to Planning and Zoning in Missouri
02:35 The Impact of Fragmentation on Zoning
05:24 Housing Affordability and Zoning Regulations
08:22 The Role of Municipalities in Housing Development
11:18 Challenges of NIMBYism and YIMBYism
14:21 Accessory Dwelling Units and Short-Term Rentals
17:00 Planning and Infrastructure in Missouri
19:57 Future Papers and Conclusion
Transcript
Susan Pendergrass (00:00)
Thank you, David Stokes, so much for being on the podcast this morning. You have a new paper out with the Show Me Institute. Well, it’s actually part three of an existing series on your free market guide to Missouri municipalities. And this one is on planning and zoning. So thanks for joining us to answer some questions about it. Great. I do have one question that I was just saying before we started recording. I’ve seen this paper a few times.
David Stokes (00:19)
Delighted to be here.
Susan Pendergrass (00:26)
And one thing that I noticed up front is that I complain about the number of school districts in St. Louis County and how fragmented it is. And other folks have also said similar things, too many small municipalities. But it seems to be the case that when we’re talking about things like planning and zoning and permitting and regulations, that can be a good thing. Is that right?
David Stokes (00:46)
Absolutely. One of the because it’s harder to enact comprehensive planning, zoning, major things like urban growth boundaries, the stuff that like the extreme things like an urban growth boundary that we don’t have in Missouri. But it’s harder to enact that the more governments you have to get in line to agree to it in the first place. So so it’s definitely it’s I don’t want to say it’s a causation. I don’t think the data is there to
Susan Pendergrass (00:47)
What?
David Stokes (01:14)
But it’s definitely a, I would say it’s a truism that, you know, there’s a, there’s a strong connection between the, the metropolitan areas that have less strict zoning around the country. And over the past decade, we’ve really changed a lot in American local public policy to realize the harms of overly strict zoning. And until the past decade or so, it was just sort of assumed that strict zoning was a good thing. So now that we recognize the harms of it, we see that
You know, the place the places like St. Louis and to a lesser extent, Kansas City, but that have. More fragmentation in Saint Louis by any measure nationally has extreme fragmentation, meaning a whole lot of local governments, be they cities or school districts or fire districts or street like districts. I mean, we can really get into the obscure ones here in Missouri, but the more you have of that, the less strict zoning you’re going to have. And then that results in lower housing prices like what is.
Susan Pendergrass (02:00)
you
David Stokes (02:10)
What is the good that comes from that in the end? I think there’s lots of goods that come from it and some harms too. But the real good, the point of this paper and the good that somebody who doesn’t care about public policy or libertarian thoughts or anything, it just wants to be able to buy a nice house at an affordable price. I the less strict zoning you have, the more fragmentation you have, you see that is seen in lower housing costs.
Susan Pendergrass (02:35)
Yeah, and if you were starting a business too and one municipality, let’s say Clayton, has really high restrictions on what you can build, where you can build a health office and be, I don’t know if they do or don’t, but then you could just simply go next door to the next place and just pick a different place that has fewer restrictions.
David Stokes (02:52)
You can’t and that that that does happen. One of the one of the one of the ways that they’ve solved that dilemma in Saint Louis County, especially as they do a lot more code enforcement and permitting at the county level than at the municipal level. Because nobody wants to have to get you know, if you’re going to install, if I’m going to be a plumber, nobody wants to have a plumbing license in 88 different cities. So they just
they do that type of thing at the county level. You get your county license and it’s good throughout the all of St. Louis County. Now there’s good aspects of that. I mean, mostly that you have to get one license instead of 88. So that’s an obvious good, but it’s also it’s subject to abuse as well. It’s sort of the counter argument to the benefits of fragmentation in that it’s easier for special interest groups, like in this case, say the plumbers union to capture
licensing in St. Louis County if they only have to dominate one board as opposed to 88 boards. So there’s the two different ways to go. There’s the good and then the part of it that might not be quite as good.
Susan Pendergrass (03:59)
Yeah, so you make the point in this paper that while St. Louis does not necessarily have a housing affordability issue or maybe even Missouri, it’s still worthwhile for folks who are working at the municipal level, like if you’re working as a newly elected Board of Aldermen or newly elected County Board official to educate yourself on what is and isn’t possible to make sure that you avoid what you just described as like the pitfalls of over-regulating.
David Stokes (04:28)
Absolutely. A lot of this paper is about in the not a very scientific term, sort of low hanging fruit. Like, like just because zoning in Missouri may be less strict than in other states. And that’s, there’s actually a, I discovered in researching this paper, I’d always sort of understood and known that zoning in Missouri and in St. Louis and Kansas city was less strict than in many other parts of the country. But then I discovered that there is actually an index out of the Wharton.
Business School is the University of Pennsylvania that actually ranks metropolitan areas by zoning strictness. And St. Louis is the least strict for zoning of any metropolitan area in the country in this ranking. And Kansas City is sort of in the middle. But then you see that Kansas City on the Missouri side is closer to St. Louis and it’s the Kansas side that sort of is more strict and puts them in the middle. So we really do have not strict zoning.
Susan Pendergrass (05:05)
That’s hilarious.
David Stokes (05:24)
And that’s a wonderful thing, but it doesn’t mean that cities shouldn’t make some of these reforms that are becoming that are coming nationwide that they still wouldn’t benefit in Missouri, such as abolishing minimum parking requirements, allowing smaller lot sizes, allowing people to build accessory dwelling units on their own property. It’s really a, it’s a great reform to focus on from, would say from the ShowMeInstitute’s perspective, because it
It’s these are changes that can be made that enhance people’s own property rights and what they can do for their own property. Well, at the same time, give giving people more choice. And in the long run, if you do more of these, you’ll you’ll help keep housing prices down even more for people throughout this. And in a good way, you’re not you’re not doing this to mandates or rules. You’re just saying we’re going to allow people to build even more. And I’m not every limit on every property thing ever. There are
Susan Pendergrass (06:17)
Yes, ma’am.
David Stokes (06:21)
some ones that are reasonable, like particularly in Missouri, we have floodplain limits on where you build that are very much very reasonable in many cases, but there’s still a lot of good stuff we can do.
Susan Pendergrass (06:33)
Yeah, I I saw recently last week that in like the upcoming election cycle, housing affordability is like a top issue for folks. This is like really bubbling up the list of priorities because it’s gotten so expensive and, you know, I keep reading about white people can’t afford to move and they can’t afford to sell their home or they can’t afford to buy a home. And certainly some markets, like you mentioned the paper, like Portland and you, you
mentioned this briefly, Portland’s got a brown zone and a green zone and you can’t build in the green zone. You have to stay in the brown zone and it makes it very prohibitively expensive to build new housing stock in Portland and the prices have gone up dramatically. We do not yet have that problem in St. Louis, but I know that it’s on a lot of people’s minds and certainly, think statewide, we still have some concerns about having enough affordable housing for everybody.
I do think it’s important to make sure that we don’t let regulation creep happen so that we find ourselves raising our prices artificially.
David Stokes (07:36)
And you see this in what you see these in disputes in sort of our ex urban areas now in say St. Charles in Jefferson County surrounding counties of St. Louis and on the Kansas City side as well. Whereas, you know, in last year, for example, in St. Charles County, a big new subdivision was rejected in, know, sort of a wooded part of the county. I think it was near Weldon Springs. They’re also allowing some but
Susan Pendergrass (07:56)
Was it Weldon Springs or what was that?
David Stokes (08:02)
But and that’s the dilemma that people face is that as places like St. Charles in Jefferson County, as they grow and get more more full, you know, they’re going to there’s going be inevitable pressure from the people there now to stop new. It’s called last house syndrome. It’s like, the whole zoo. Great. My new home here is great. Now don’t build anymore because I got the house and it’s perfect. And you see that everywhere and you understand the concerns. I try not to be.
Susan Pendergrass (08:22)
That’s right.
David Stokes (08:30)
I not to completely ignore the concerns of the thoughts because they’re not always wrong. Of course, we’ll go back to the floodplain issue, but you’ll have people worry. it’s the people there now like concerns about traffic and overbuilding and destruction of destruction of the wooded areas and too dense and all those things. But you just want people to realize that other people probably said the same thing before they built your house. And and it was a good thing that people in most instances
Susan Pendergrass (08:34)
Yeah.
That’s right. ⁓
David Stokes (09:00)
Really said no to that and it allowed that construction to continue. And I really want people to realize that. That if we go, it’s not on any one subdivision because look, there probably are certain instances in certain places where the sub the new zoning is too too dense, whatever it may be. It’s not that every rejection always is always completely wrong. But if you start in Missouri, making a pattern of this in the outer areas of Kansas City and St. Louis.
where you start turning down a lot of these new subdivisions to preserve the whatever it is that people moved out there for 20 years ago, then housing prices are going to increase in Missouri, then they will increase substantially. it won’t take that long if you really do stop the building. So that’s just one of the takeaways from this paper is that we need to keep to the largest extent possible, if we keep allowing the building of these
these new homes or apartments and obviously a big part of the paper is that apartments should be generally allowed in more places too. That’s how we’re gonna continue to have low housing costs and that’s the benefit of it. It’s not about one subdivision in one space, but if it becomes a trend, it’s really gonna be a problem. A trend being protecting it.
Susan Pendergrass (10:15)
Yeah, and
the multifamily for sure. Like, what are your findings around that? Like, people don’t seem to want to have to look at apartment buildings. Is that right?
David Stokes (10:25)
They don’t there’s just some some there’s just some natural rejection against it. And it’s frustrating to see and then you see in in some spots like I I remember in the city of St. Louis there was a and this is one where you when you lived in St. Louis lived near there at the corner of skinker and Delmar there was a proposal for a large apartment building right there and it got a lot of
opposition and it has not moved forward like it was it was stopped. I hope it comes back because it’s a perfect lot for an apartment apartment building. Right, right. It’s just an empty lot. It was a was a chicken restaurant for many, many years and a popular one, but it’s been vacant forever. And it’s right near public transit. So it’s it’s the perfect idea where you should be able to build there and you shouldn’t have generous or extensive
Susan Pendergrass (10:59)
an abandoned empty lot, right?
Yes.
David Stokes (11:18)
I shouldn’t say Jenner’s extensive parking requirements for those buildings because one of the projects.
Susan Pendergrass (11:21)
That’s what people were kind of freaking
out about though, was the parking. Like where are all these cars gonna go? And there was one across the street and they had only put in like one parking space for every two units or something. And they figured that people would use public transport. Anyway, it was a very, I remember the pushback on that. And it’s this NIMBYism, YIMBYism thing, right? Like it’s so hard to push people to YIMBYism because, or yes in my backyard YARDism, because of just things they don’t.
I don’t These same people often talk a lot about housing affordability, so I don’t mean to like, you know, overgeneralize, but there’s some of the very same people who are so concerned about it, don’t want to look at apartment buildings.
David Stokes (11:50)
Right, don’t want to, and you understand.
Right, that’s a very liberal area that we’re talking about. If you were to define the politics of that area, you’re right. Many of the residents of those communities in both the city and in University City right there, they would, in theory, the big picture would probably agree, but then, oh, we don’t want this development here. And it was a perfect place for a new apartment. Again, of all the St. Louis area, it’s one of the best areas served by public transit.
Susan Pendergrass (12:06)
Yes.
David Stokes (12:31)
with buses and Metrolinq and the WashU shuttles, because so many people who would be in those apartments would be WashU students. They got that extensive shuttle system. but it was rejected and I hope it comes back. And that’s just one of many, many examples of it.
Susan Pendergrass (12:31)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. What about the like, what part of zoning and planning is this push in the city of St. Louis anyway to try to get people to move downtown? Is that something that’s in like coded in like, I feel like they’re trying to get people to go downtown.
David Stokes (13:03)
They are. And thankfully, I don’t think zoning is preventing that. Like of all the reasons people may or may not be choosing to move downtown in fear of crime and businesses leaving downtown to the jobs. As somebody who lived downtown in the late 1990s and early 2000s, to move down there when many of the jobs have left, fear, it’s a harder thing to convince. But I don’t think.
Susan Pendergrass (13:05)
I don’t hear.
Okay.
David Stokes (13:27)
There’s a, I don’t think it’s difficult or ever been difficult for the, the loft developers of the nineties to get the permission to take that empty commercial building and turn it into turning into lofts. There might’ve been a lot of issues. I had to do it, but zoning, don’t believe it was one of them. Thankfully, thankfully that’s, and that’s a very, that’s a very good thing, but it’s one of the fun parts about this paper was right. Is that, you know, it’s the
Susan Pendergrass (13:41)
Yeah.
David Stokes (13:53)
We’re talking in the other papers about in the ones to come out in the future, like what are the best ways to do, you know, public safety and public works and a lot of things. But, you know, in most of these instances, we all agree that somebody has to do this service. And it’s just a question of does the city provide it themselves? Do they provide it? Do they contract with a neighboring municipality to do it, such as a small city contracting with a neighboring city to do police service?
should you let the private sector do it in a regulated manner like utilities, but we can all agree it has to be done. Whereas I started this paper saying, despite the fact that it may be incredibly common, cities don’t actually need planning or zoning. Like it can’t exist without it. And that’s where the current HOA options come into play. And the history of HOAs in St. Louis in the private place model is such an interesting.
Susan Pendergrass (14:34)
Yeah.
David Stokes (14:48)
part of that. so there’s a little bit of the historic discussion of all of this in the paper too.
Susan Pendergrass (14:53)
So where does Missouri stand, Missouri municipalities for the most part right now stand on things like, two questions I’m gonna ask you about accessory dwelling units and short-term rentals or Airbnbs. Where do they stand on ADUs?
David Stokes (15:06)
Well, slowly but surely, we’re starting to permit ADU’s. We haven’t had any sort of state to my knowledge. We haven’t had any statewide overarching legislation. And that’s where our sort of the fact that we have low housing costs in Missouri. Like, I don’t think we’re going to see this sort of in California that had to go statewide because none of the municipalities would agree to it. I don’t think we’re going to see that here because there’s not the tremendous high cost of housing crisis to sort of push that.
But slowly but surely cities are starting to allow more ADU’s and that’s a very good thing. Cause when you get out into, I think it’s going to be easier as that continues to spread, you get out into rural areas. And if you have places that don’t even have zoning in the first place, you can do any ADU you want to or, or the zoning. So the zoning is so loose that of course you can build a apartment above your garage if you’d like to. are you even asking? So, but the cities have the rules against it.
Susan Pendergrass (15:52)
That’s where I live.
David Stokes (16:03)
slowly but surely moving in the right direction there. And then it’s going in the opposite way with the short-term rental prohibition. As slowly but surely most cities are instituting short-term rental limitations. And I’m not automatically opposed to that in every case. What I mean is I get it. If you have a neighborhood right there and all of a sudden there’s a house where there’s big parties being thrown every weekend, cause they’re renting it out to a different…
Susan Pendergrass (16:11)
What’s happening there?
David Stokes (16:32)
of people to throw to throw parties like you’re going to hate that. And that’s going to impact the quality of your life. So I’ve just been talking for a few years now that the short term ADU regulations I support would generally be things that don’t just go to a blanket prohibition on them. I think that’s way too far. And most cities aren’t doing that, but really focus on punishment of the property owner for
for repeated rule breaking out there. you know, one party is maybe one party, but if there’s a trend where you’re, you own the property and the people are you renting to are consistently out of control, then you can, the fines should be increased. they get out. wouldn’t be opposed to them getting fairly steep up to a point too, that if it happens too often, you, you know, you do, you would lose your business license to, to operate that ADU. Because I do think that if you’re doing it a lot, if you’re routinely renting it out,
You should be treated a little more like a hotel or we don’t want to give 80. We don’t give short term rentals an advantage. I might have said ADU there when I meant short term rental. We don’t want to give them a biased advantage over the hotel motel industry. You want that playing field to be as level as possible, especially for people who are renting their houses or condos or whatever out a lot. So then pull that license to do that if it’s an abuse that’s happening consistently. But let’s try to.
Susan Pendergrass (17:55)
Well, I had that on my street.
David Stokes (17:56)
Let’s go to a method
through crackdown on rule breaking, not blankie prohibitions.
Susan Pendergrass (18:00)
Yeah,
we had that on my street in St. Louis and it was a street of, I don’t know, three or four bedroom houses and they somehow had eight bedrooms and a pool, which was very rare in my neighborhood. So they mostly just rented it out to college students and got called all the time. The police got brought in all the time for noise complaints. And there wasn’t really a good mechanism of place at the time to…
prevent it from happening. So I agree that there should be some limitations around them, but not to make it so strict that people can’t use it as intended. I mean, I stay in Airbnbs all the time. I like having them, but.
David Stokes (18:36)
Now that police dilemma, that’s something in St. Louis and probably Kansas City, a few big cities where the cops, they just have better things to do than break up parties. mean, they’ve got violent crimes to address. That’s an issue. How are they gonna take it seriously enough? In the average Missouri suburb or mid-sized cities, the police are gonna take that a little more seriously, I would think. And the comparison, a good one that I like is in Lake of the Ozarks, where…
Some cities have instituted strict rules against short-term rentals, while others like Osage Beach, at least as of our research, hadn’t instituted anything. It took a much more free market approach to it to let’s, well, we’re a tourist area. We want tourists to come here. So it’ll be a good natural experiment over time to see how it affects property values, how growth is affected as different.
Susan Pendergrass (19:15)
Ha ha ha.
Yeah.
David Stokes (19:30)
Comparable cities in the lake of the Ozark region choose different paths to move forward. So I definitely look forward to following that
Susan Pendergrass (19:37)
Well, then I’ll know another component to this paper is on planning and this, think you just said a city doesn’t have to do planning if they don’t choose to, but are Missouri cities or municipalities planners? I mean, is that a planned thing or are we more like anything goes?
David Stokes (19:56)
What most Missouri cities have planned. Right?
Susan Pendergrass (19:57)
I’ve been to Newtown, by the way, I just want to say. I have visited
Newtown, so… Before you start talking.
David Stokes (20:03)
Well, that’s that’s sort of
the architectural planning. Like, how do we want to design it? Then there’s the legal sort of defined planning. And luckily, again, and I really don’t think Missouri cities need to do any any planning sort of outside of general infrastructure planning. So I shouldn’t say they don’t need to do any planning is there’s the general infrastructure planning that pretty much everybody supports. Meaning you should have an idea.
of how growth is going to go in your city and where you’re going to put sewers and where you’re going to put sidewalks and streets. And you want to just have a general long-term plan for that, even if that plan is as it should be, thoroughly adjustable and could be changed to as growth happens and as growth happens naturally. But then you get into planning as well, like we mentioned with Portland earlier, like urban growth boundaries where the planners really start to say, you can live here.
Susan Pendergrass (20:53)
Yes.
David Stokes (20:57)
You cannot live here. You can’t build here. You cannot build here. And it gets to really extreme. And we don’t really have that in Missouri. Thankfully, the plans that cities do adopt can be easily amended by any city council. They can be they can be changed. When I worked at St. Louis County, you know, of course, we dealt with the county planning commission for the parts of the the council district I worked in that were unincorporated, where the planning commission had a lot to say on on that. So it’s
Susan Pendergrass (21:18)
Right.
David Stokes (21:26)
elected officials can and should be able to sort of change that plan as they go about it. And then the biggest, let’s say something, you permitted development that’s against your plan, but the elected officials want to do it anyway. I usually don’t have, I don’t have a problem with that. The fact that it’s inconsistent with your plan would generally be something that if locals want to sue to stop the development that they would then cite in the lawsuit that it was inconsistent with your process and your plan and
Susan Pendergrass (21:48)
Mm. ⁓
David Stokes (21:55)
but then it’d be determined by judges and the whole legal process there. But planning in Missouri is something that A, outside of basic infrastructure planning, cities shouldn’t really do. And to the extent that they do it, it’s easily amended and changed. And that’s a good thing.
Susan Pendergrass (21:55)
Mm.
Mm-hmm.
So the first two papers in your series were taxation, right?
David Stokes (22:20)
Taxation was number two and the first one was just sort of the structure of municipal government in Missouri. Like it had a lot to do with city managers. And then the fragmentation issue was addressed as well in the first one that we discussed here because that’s a part of that obviously.
Susan Pendergrass (22:23)
introductory. Okay. And taxation. And this is zoning and planning.
Right.
And then what’s on deck? What’s the next one?
David Stokes (22:41)
We don’t actually know yet. Like what number four will be germinating. It’s most of them are ready to go pretty, pretty quickly. So I think the next one will be released in the next within the next two months, certainly this year. And I think it’s going to be on on public works, but we have papers coming on public works, public safety, parks and recreation, which is one I’m really going to enjoy. you know, I love
Susan Pendergrass (22:43)
you’re still germinating.
Nice.
David Stokes (23:08)
You go to Forest Park and there’s all the great things in St. Louis’s Forest Park. And then you realize that many of the wonderful things there are actually done under contract with the private sector, either for-profit businesses like the Boathouse and the ice rink that pay the city to operate, or nonprofit businesses like the Muni that have been in the park for a long time. So it’s a great, great option to talk about all the different ways to provide parks and recreation services.
Susan Pendergrass (23:18)
Yeah.
David Stokes (23:35)
But those are at least three of the upcoming ones. And then there’ll be a concluding, summarize it all up section as well.
Susan Pendergrass (23:41)
I look forward to hearing more about those and thanks for coming on to talk about planning and zoning. It’s going to be a great series when it all gets put together. Thanks.
David Stokes (23:48)
Thank you very much, Susan.
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