With its mandate to help increase homeownership, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) looks at regulatory barriers to affordability on a regular basis. As communities employ "exclusionary, discriminatory or unnecessary regulations" in order to economically restrict homebuyers, they are also excluding the very people who help make the communities work, including teachers, police, firefighters and others who can't afford to live in the community where they work.

The HUD would like to see that change.

Thirteen years ago, the Advisory Commission on Regulatory Barriers to Affordable Housing wrote a report called "Not In My Back Yard: Removing Barriers to Affordable Housing," (NIMBY) that found that such regulations do "constitute formidable barriers to affordable housing," and the same remains true today.

"A policy, rule, process or procedure is considered a barrier when it prohibits, discourages or excessively increases the costs of new or rehabilitated affordable housing without sound compensating public benefits," explains the HUD in its just-released update "Why Not In Our Community: Removing Barriers to Affordable Housing."

Affordable housing is defined by the report if a "low to moderate-income family can afford to rent or buy a decent quality dwelling without spending more than 30 percent of its income on shelter."

The increased availability of "workforce" housing would enable public servants such as nurses, teachers, firefighters and police officers to live in the communities they serve.

The 1991 Report identified a number of causes that contribute to the inaffordability of housing, including "infrastructure costs, local building practices, bureaucratic inertia, and property taxes," motivated by "opposition by residents and public officials alike to various types of affordable housing in their communities," including apartments and high-density developments, and other types of affordable housing.

Such opposition has resulted in critical shortages of affordable housing in many communities when costs could be reduced by as much as 35 percent.

One area that can largely reduce the cost of housing is where artificial impact fees discourage affordable development.

"When you pass a regulation in 1972, and regulations keep being layered on," says a HUD spokesperson, "the layers are obstacles to build any house. It adds tens of thousands onto the cost of the home. Over time, you will have many communities reaching that saturation point where a teacher can't afford to live there and teach."

Why should Realtors care when discriminating communities are artificially keeping prices high? "Not only are working families impacted," explains the spokesperson, "it has an impact on Realtors who sell homes. All of a sudden the market dries up, people aren't moving out and selling homes becomes more difficult. Homeowners start to do cash-out refis and renovating because they can't afford to move up. It reduces the amount of purchase loan activity, and the amount of product to sell as people hunker down and stay where they are."

In 1998, for example, the National Association of Home Builders found that in 42 metropolitan areas, eliminating unnecessary government regulations, fees, and delays could reduce housing costs by 10 percent.

Among the trends driving inaffordability are:

• Increased complexity of environmental regulation -- inefficient and lengthy review and approval processes

• Misuse of smart growth -- restricting growth and limiting land supply leading to higher housing costs

• Still "NIMBY" in the suburbs -- exclusionary zoning, excessive subdivision controls and project approval delay tactics to exclude rental and affordable housing

• Impact fee expansion -- disproportionate fees to communities' actual costs

• Urban barriers -- building codes, rehabilitation, and infill development -- slow and burdensome permit and approval systems, outdated codes requiring old-fashioned and expensive materials, outdated construction methods, and excessive rehabilitation requirements

In response, a number of communities are overhauling their regulatory barriers including New York City, which is examining its building codes, rezoning commercial and industrial areas for residential use and developing city-owned property for affordable housing. Tucson, AZ and Berkeley, CA are streamlining processing and one-stop permits, respectively. Cincinnati, OH guarantees that plans for small projects up to 20 units will receive approval or disapproval of plans within 8 to 10 days after submission.

The Report recommends that the Federal Government first put its own house in order, by removing or reforming "existing Federal rules and regulations that have an adverse effect on housing affordability, and initiate procedures to minimize adverse effects in future regulations." States should take the lead in removing affordability barriers as well, by "recognizing affordability as a State goal, creating procedures for reconciling local regulations with State goals, eliminating redundant regulations, developing procedures for resolving disputes, setting Statewide standards in support of affordable housing, eliminating discrimination against certain types of affordable housing, and providing state financial incentives for affordable housing and regulatory reform."