A New Phase of the Quiet Revolution

Abstract

A significant trend is developing in state land use legislation—the enactment of statutes to prevent or curtail exclusionary zoning of community homes serving developmentally disabled persons. Of particular interest is the fact that this legislation, through its implementation of state land use policies, exemplifies the Quiet Revolution that Bosselman and Callies discuss in their book The Quiet Revolution in Land Use Control: “the need to provide some degree of state or regional participation in the major decisions that affect the use of our increasingly limited supply of land.”¹ Further, the fact that over one-third of the states—17 in all—have adopted such laws² suggests that a workable strategy to attack local exclusion of community homes has been developed and is being implemented.³ By contrast, neither legislative nor litigative strategies to end exclusionary zoning of low- and moderate-income housing have achieved widespread success.