Abstract

Local governments struggle to site infrastructure that society needs, but few people want nearby. From housing to clean energy, this infrastructure is often built in the politically weakest neighborhoods. In contrast, district elections — which increase spatial and often descriptive representation — improve equity in the siting of housing, but also lead to less new supply overall threatening long-run affordability (Hankinson and Magazinnik 2023). Can top-down pressure from a higher-level of government break this trade-off between supply and equity? In California, the state government uses the threat of preemption to compel cities to report where they plan to permit the large increases in the local housing supply assigned by state law. Using data from 57 California cities, we assess whether this top-down pressure combined with a conditionally exogenous switch to district elections breaks the supply–equity trade-off and instead secures both policy goals. To our surprise, switching to district elections leads to a greater imbalance of planned housing between majority and minority neighborhoods, compared to cities that remain at-large. As a mechanism, we find evidence that this treatment effect is being driven by cities where the turnout gap between majority and minority neighborhoods increased following the switch to districts. We speculate that the reform may have disproportionately mobilized majority voters to advocate for their neighborhoods, including greater engagement in the housing element process.

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