Homes are less affordable than ever before, and that problem is especially acute for young couples who have children or who would like to start a family. That makes it all the more infuriating when cities and counties try to expand their housing stock in a way that explicitly doesn’t accommodate young parents.

A new paper in the Yale Law Journal explores one sort of anti-family housing discrimination: Municipalities often approve new low-income housing available only to senior citizens.

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Normally, housing discrimination is illegal under the federal Fair Housing Act. But Congress in 1995 passed the Housing for Older Persons Act, which specifically allows for senior housing.

The authors write, “Opposition to affordable housing often coalesces around a bare hostility toward low-income families with children. When faced with proposals to build affordable housing, municipalities demand that developers build with age restrictions or not at all.”

That is, many local governments support more housing that specifically excludes parents and their children.

Of course, senior housing can end up helping parents. Desirable homes for the elderly might induce some old folks to move out of non-senior housing, freeing up other supply. Also, if grandma can move nearby, that makes it more likely you have another child.

But during a baby bust where the housing pinch seems like the dominant financial factor, it’s perverse to prioritize housing for non-families.

The authors of the Yale Law Journal article chalk this up to class warfare: “Critically, exclusionary municipalities do not oppose all forms of housing for families. Local policymakers rarely raise objections to single-family homes, whose occupants are, on average, wealthier and whiter than residents of multifamily housing.”

MAGAZINE: GAMES ARE FOR THE ADULTS NOW

This isn’t my experience. I wrote the following in my 2024 book, Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder than It Needs to Be:

“A big problem is that a lot of local political leaders don’t really want families moving in. ‘Businesses mean revenue. Families mean costs,’ Tom Weisner, the late mayor of Aurora, Illinois, once told me. Families mean schools, playgrounds, sidewalks, and social services, all of which cost money, and none of which bring in revenue. Businesses mean sales taxes and greater property taxes. Childless young professionals have the most disposable income to spend downtown.”

Politics erects multiple headwinds to family housing in particular. That needs to change.