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How Backlash Reversed a Florida City’s Reforms to Allow Denser Housing

The swift about-face of Gainesville's plan to end single-family zoning shows that pro-housing advocates still face tough local battles. 

Lawmakers in Gainesville, Florida, passed a plan to end exclusionary zoning. Then came the backlash. 

Lawmakers in Gainesville, Florida, passed a plan to end exclusionary zoning. Then came the backlash. 

Photographer: Sean Pavone/iStockphoto

Just hours after being sworn in, commissioners in the Florida college town of Gainesville voted to reverse a zoning plan that sought to increase housing supply in the city. That plan, passed by a lame duck city commission in August, had made Gainesville the first city in Florida to eliminate single-family only zoning citywide. 

Gainesville has long been a liberal enclave in an increasingly red Florida, but the zoning plan drew the ire of many local residents and caught the attention of Republican state leaders, who threatened state preemption and legal challenges in the wake of its passage late last year. Now local Democrats are poised to repeal the plan before it can be implemented.