Informality and Inequality in the Global North: Regulation, Non-Compliance, and Enforcement in US Land Use and Housing Law

Over the past decade, scholars have illustrated that informal housing – housing that violates laws and regulations or is denied their protection – is both common and broadly socially acceptable in the U.S. For example, homeowners frequently convert garages, basements, or attics into housing units – or build new dwelling units in their backyards – without seeking permits or adhering to local regulations such as building codes and zoning ordinances.

Recent estimates suggest that in some metropolitan areas as many as half of new housing units are built without permits. Although these informal units provide a much-needed supply of housing in high-cost metropolitan areas where there is a severe unmet demand for affordable housing, they can also pose important health and safety risks to residents and exacerbate inequalities regarding access to adequate and safe housing and infrastructure.

This project examines local governments’ efforts to address non-compliance with land use and housing laws by documenting the ways in which land use regulation itself or its discretionary enforcement contributes to the proliferation of informal housing. It will address the needs of socially vulnerable communities by conducting social and legal research on understudied forms of informal housing where evidence suggests a disproportionate share of low-income and racial/ethnic minority residents live.

It will inform more equitable policymaking and planning through project publications and reports and will improve legal and social science education by training graduate students in qualitative and quantitative analysis of informal housing. Lastly, it will advance broader understandings of the importance and implications of informal housing by developing and distributing case studies for inclusion in undergraduate and graduate sociology, law, urban planning, and public policy courses.

This study advances science and builds on two important socio-legal traditions – the disconnection between law-on-the-books and law-in-action, and legal consciousness – by examining the efficacy of and challenges to land use and housing law; interrogating the state’s approach to and capacity for enforcement in the context of widespread non-compliance; identifying myriad challenges to governance and implications for inequality posed by the proliferation of informal housing; and examining the role of power and legitimacy in the implementation and enforcement of law in the context of land use and housing. To do so, it uses quantitative data at both the national and local levels to examine the relationship between the production of informal housing units, the local regulatory environment, and local expenditures on code enforcement.

It also examines the dynamics of law, enforcement, discretion, and legitimacy in the context of widespread housing informality. It does so by documenting how public officials such as planners, code enforcement officers, or zoning appeal boards negotiate the demands and dilemmas of public service through discretionary decisions; how producers and users of housing conform to or transgress laws; and the ways they make sense of the legality of informal housing.

In doing so, the project will elucidate the mechanisms by which the translation of housing laws (“in action”) produces informal housing units, and how cultural interpretations of housing laws and norms confer legitimacy that contributes to their persistence.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.