Using Disparate Impact to Restore Housing Affordability and Property Rights in Colorado0

• March 17, 2017

Fair-housing advocates should question policies that increase housing costs by intruding on private property rights. These include growth- management tools such as urban-growth boundaries, the use of eminent domain for economic development, rent control, inclusionary zoning, and excessive impact fees, all of which benefit a few at everyone else’s expense. In approving the disparate- impact doctrine, the Supreme Court has offered a tool to both affordable-housing advocates and property-rights advocates for undoing these rules and policies that make housing less affordable.