How New York State Can Improve Schools by Fixing Housing Policy

Policymakers in New York are grappling with how to improve housing affordability statewide and in individual cities and towns. A critical path for doing so is reducing the exclusionary zoning barriers that artificially constrain the supply of housing, thereby driving up prices. As public officials shape those reforms to promote housing affordability, they have an equally important chance to improve educational opportunities for students by reducing economic and racial segregation in neighborhoods as well as in schools—both of which currently function as drivers of educational inequality.