Zoning, Part II: A History of Zoning You Ought to Know
This article was prepared by Glennon Sweeney, Senior Community Outreach Representative at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity. This editorial was prepared in her personal time in her personal capacity as a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of City and Regional Planning at The Ohio State University. The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the view of Building Worthington’s Future or its members. However, the author reports important and critical points that we feel are valuable and worth reviewing considering the City of Worthington and our mission to develop the future of Worthington positively and respectfully.
Glennon also serves on Worthington’s Community Relationship Commission as Vice Chair. She grew up in Worthington and is a graduate of Worthington Kilbourne High School. Her comments continue the dialogue that started in 2022 when Building Worthington’s Future participated in the Building Inclusive Communities initiative.
Glennon is a scholar and activist residing in the Worthington School District. She works as a senior community outreach representative at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at The Ohio State University. Her research expertise lies at the intersection of land use and development policy and metropolitan segregation with an emphasis on the role that suburban municipalities played and continue to play in creating and maintaining segregation. A parent of two teenagers, Glennon is a lifelong school district resident. Glennon currently serves on the Worthington Community Relations Commission and sits on the board of directors for Erase the Space.
The exclusivity of Worthington’s zoning code is not unique. Many municipalities and even large portions of the city of Columbus have exclusionary zoning codes. The origins of these exclusionary zoning codes can be found in 20th-century policies and practices fueled by lies, racism, classism, and efforts by some to profit from the fears that these elicited.
There is a relationship between zoning codes and restrictive covenants in property deeds. Restrictive covenants are agreements in property deeds, declarations, wills, or other legal documentation that restrict what can be done with a property. They were created by the first planned suburban developers around the turn of the twentieth century.6 Restrictive covenants were part of a broader plot by early realtors (many of whom, by the way, were the same
individuals developing the first planned suburbs) to profit from the manufacture of segregated communities by spreading a falsehood, that the mixing of social and racial groups lowers property values.7 It is unclear whether the primary motivator for this group of realtor developers was profit or racism, and it is likely that individual motivations varied and that both factors played a role. Nonetheless, these early realtor-developers formed a club, calling themselves “Developers of High-Class Residential Property” and set about promoting segregation throughout the United States.8
The primary tool they pushed was the use of restrictive covenants in housing deeds. Interestingly, these early realtor developers were uncertain about the legality of racial restrictions, fearing, justifiably so as history would prove, that they might violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Thus, they first employed restrictions aimed at class (as minoritized groups were often less well-off than whites) and activities that specific groups considered nonwhite might be more likely to engage in and less likely to give up (like agriculture)9. Emboldened by how quickly these clauses proliferated, they began including racial (aimed at Blacks, Natives, Hispanics, Asians, and all groups considered non-white which throughout the century included Italians, Irish, and Eastern Europeans broadly, among others) and even religious restrictions (generally aimed at Jews and Catholics). Over time, the newly created Federal Housing Administration (FHA), buying into the lie told by realtor developers, began requiring racial restrictions in deeds for properties in order for subdivisions to qualify for federal mortgage insurance, thus restricting the vast majority of new housing to whites only.10 By the end of the 1930s, our federal government had become the most effective proponent of segregation and America was quite segregated, with people considered non-white typically confined to much smaller real estate markets than their populations required, the result of which was a housing shortage, leading to overpayment for low quality units that most people were unable to purchase due to the neighborhoods being ineligible for federally insured mortgages.11
By the mid-1920s, many central Ohio municipalities began adopting zoning codes. Zoning was created to protect public health and property values by separating harmful land uses from residential ones. But, if you recall the lie that early realtor developers propagated about how the mixing of social and racial groups harms property values, then you won’t be surprised to learn that people considered nonwhite were also considered harmful to property values at this time in the United States of America. Many Americans at that time believed that social conditions were caused by people of poor character, not by policy. A myth that many Americans still believe to this day. As a result, some of the first comprehensive zoning codes in the country passed between 1910 and 1917, were racial zoning codes. In addition to separating by race, early zoning codes also borrowed other restrictions from these early covenants, including use restrictions (single-family, two-family, etc.), setback restrictions, property size requirements, home size requirements, and agricultural restrictions. Much of what influenced this was the role that early realtor developers played in creating segregated communities through the prolific use of exclusionary and racially restrictive covenants.
When racial zoning was declared to be in violation of the civil rights of people considered nonwhite in 1917,12 these other exclusionary components of zoning code borrowed from restrictive covenants were not mentioned, and many remain in zoning codes to this day. Likewise, the use of racially restrictive covenants continued in some home deeds as an intimidation tactic after they were declared unconstitutional in 194813. Realtor developers, in anticipation of this ruling, had long since begun creating Home Ownership Associations (HOAs) to continue to enforce racial, ethnic, religious, and class segregation.
This history of how zoning codes and restrictive covenants were created and employed to divide illustrates how much the values of segregation and separation fueled by racism, classism, and bigotry dominated both national and local conversations about land use throughout the first two-thirds of the twentieth century. These were the dominant values Americans professed through zoning laws. Many of the zoning codes in our region have not been comprehensively updated since this rather disturbing era. While the private clauses aimed at restricting specific racial and ethnic groups are no longer enforceable, Worthington’s zoning code continues to contain many of the restrictions included in early deed covenants. Today, many of the development and sociodemographic patterns these codes set into motion remain unchanged.
Property ownership is the number one way that Americans build wealth. The land use policies described above were designed to disenfranchise nonwhites from property ownership and therefore wealth generation. They did this through disinvesting in communities where nonwhites and immigrants lived while investing in neighborhoods where white and wealthier families resided. This was largely achieved by permitting access to federally insured mortgages (the only affordable mortgages that exist) to favored neighborhoods, neighborhoods that restricted people considered nonwhite, immigrants, and the poor from residing in their borders. Remember, such communities were able to restrict through a combination of private agreements (racial and exclusionary restrictive covenants, Homeownership Associations) and policy (redlining, zoning code). People who lived in these neighborhoods were able to own property and property values in these neighborhoods generally increased in good economic conditions. On the other hand, neighborhoods where nonwhites and immigrants resided were denied federally insured mortgages, and homeownership rates – and therefore wealth generation – plummeted and unit maintenance suffered, leading to a decline.
The continued use of exclusionary zoning components, which heavily favor single-family uses, large setbacks, and large lot and house size requirements, increase the cost of living in a community, excluding lower-income residents, and perpetuating inequality created in the twentieth century. The compounding impacts of land use and mortgage finance policies (both of which were implemented in a way that favored whites while excluding nonwhites) created disparities in white and nonwhite homeownership rates, and, subsequently, wealth. Without providing accessibility to exclusive neighborhoods, income and wealth inequality in the United States will continue to increase.
While people considered nonwhite were harmed by the policies and practices I outlined above, it should be emphasized how much white people benefitted from these policies, enabling generations of white families access to the wealth-building structure of property ownership long before those considered nonwhite were able to fully access and utilize this opportunity. This is reflected in the nation’s wealth disparities that in 2022 showed that white households hold 86.1% of overall wealth in the entire country, with Black households holding only 2.9% and Hispanic households holding only 2.8%14. It should be noted that in 2022, Blacks accounted for 15.6% of the population, Hispanics 10.9%, and whites only 68.1% of the population, illustrating stark racialized wealth disparities which can be traced to the land use and development policies and practices outlined in this blog series15.
Worthington benefitted from receiving access to federal mortgage insurance, enabling homeownership to flourish in the community. This, in turn, was made possible by the use of racial and exclusionary restrictive covenants and exclusionary zoning practices. I generally focus on policy because policy is a big part of how we got into this situation, but it is critical that we remember the role of individual actions in creating and maintaining segregation. The majority of
American whites did not fight segregation throughout most of the 20th century. In fact, many whites fought for segregation throughout this period. The most well-known example of this is probably the way that white people protested school desegregation, but similar stories of protest and harassment followed Black families that moved into previously all-white suburbs during the 50s and 60s as well.16
In fact, claims by Project Community Park Worthington (PCPW) that “we own the zoning” in this community are very much in line with the way that white suburbanites think about and use land use controls to exclude. In this case, PCPW wanted a community park instead of apartments. Apartments that undoubtedly would have provided housing type diversity to our overwhelmingly single-family community, opening options for people who can’t afford a single-family home. Individual action is important, and it can be employed to support segregation or to fight it. But I don’t typically see people excited about a new development proposal that will create diversity in housing unit type showing up at council to state their support when I frequently see people upset about the threat that density or difference might mean for their property values show up quite frequently. These are the values our elected officials hear about most frequently and which likely hold a large amount of influence on their decisions.
It is also important to bust the myth that density harms property values. This is false. If I took a typical Worthington single-family lot with a home worth, say, $450,000 and upzoned the lot for four units, those four units would likely sell for at least $250,000 each, creating $1,000,000 in value, $550,000 more than the single-family home. Individual actions matter, and I encourage those who share the value of inclusivity to express their support to Council for inclusive land use and development policies.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I love Worthington, but I do want Worthington to become more inclusive, more accepting of people who might not make as much money as the average resident, and more attractive to people from different cultures, religions, and racial and ethnic backgrounds than the 90% white population of the city today. I want Worthington to be a place of opportunity, where all types of people from all types of backgrounds, incomes, and identities can build successful lives and flourish, and I believe policy is a big part of how we get there. In the final part of this series, I will lay out some ways that I believe Worthington can work to become more inclusive, a few of which City Council is already discussing
6 Glotzer, P. (2020). How the Suburbs Were Segregated: Developers and the Business of Exclusionary Housing, 1890-1960. Columbia University Press: New York.
7 Slater, G. (2021). Freedom to Discriminate: How Realtors Conspired to Segregated Housing and Divide America. Heyday: Berkeley, CA.
8 Glotzer, P. (2020). How the Suburbs Were Segregated: Developers and the Business of Exclusionary Housing, 1890-1960. Columbia University Press: New York.
9 Wiese, A. (2004). Places of Their Own: African American Suburbanization in the Twentieth Century. University of Chicago Press: Chicago, Il.
10 Rothstein, R. (2017). The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. Liveright Publishing Corporation: New York.
11 Slater, G. (2021). Freedom to Discriminate: How Realtors Conspired to Segregated Housing and Divide America. Heyday: Berkeley, CA.
12 (1917). Buchanan v Warley, 245 U.S. 60.
13 (1948). Shelley v Braemer, 334 U.S. 1.
14 https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/wealth-inequality-and-the-racial-wealth-gap- 20211022.html
15 in addition to other systemic inequalities which began with the Transatlantic Slave Trade and genocide committed with the settlement of North America
16 Rothstein, R. (2017). The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. Liveright Publishing Corporation: New York
