Biden’s innovative idea for tackling skyrocketing housing prices

A dozen pages into the fact sheet for President Joe Biden’s infrastructure plan, he marks a growing shift in Democratic orthodoxy and a new plan for zoning reform:

Eliminate exclusionary zoning and harmful land use policies. For decades, exclusionary zoning laws — like minimum lot sizes, mandatory parking requirements, and prohibitions on multifamily housing — have inflated housing and construction costs and locked families out of areas with more opportunities. President Biden is calling on Congress to enact an innovative, new competitive grant program that awards flexible and attractive funding to jurisdictions that take concrete steps to eliminate such needless barriers to producing affordable housing.

You’d be forgiven if your eyes glazed over at “minimum lot sizes” and “mandatory parking requirements,” but in this paragraph is an acknowledgment that the seemingly mundane local rules that govern what and where houses can be built have had devastating effects on the American people.