The Supply-Equity Trade-Off: The Effect of Spatial Representation on the Local Housing Supply

Institutions that structure representation have systematically disadvantaged racial and ethnic minorities in the United States. We examine an understudied dimension of this problem: how local electoral rules shape the provision of collective goods in relation to racial groups. We leverage the California Voting Rights Act of 2001, which compelled over 100 cities to switch from at-large to district elections for city council, to causally identify how equalizing spatial representation changes the permitting of new housing. District elections decrease the supply of new multifamily housing, particularly in segregated cities with sizable and systematically underrepresented minority groups. But district elections also end the disproportionate channeling of new housing into minority neighborhoods. Together, our findings highlight a fundamental trade-off: at-large representation may facilitate the production of goods with diffuse benefits and concentrated costs, but it does so by forcing less politically powerful constituencies to bear the brunt of those costs.