Public hearings aren't the whole story

When a housing project comes before a city council or planning and zoning commission, the room often fills with neighbors who oppose it. They passionately testify about how a housing development will worsen traffic or disrupt their neighborhood character.

We can all empathize with their concerns. Change is hard, especially when it's happening in the place you call home. But we know that the voices that oppose housing do sometimes cause housing developments to get shut down, and not always because the project failed to meet the code, but because the body approving it felt the political pressure and found a reason to say no.

Ultimately this restricts housing supply, causes prices to go up for everyone. One thing we're doing is talking with elected officials and commissioners about what the law says regarding these situations - while hopefully inspiring everyday Idahoans to reach out to their electeds, and show up to hearings to counter the opposition.

Two different kinds of land use decisions

Under Idaho's Local Land Use Planning Act (LLUPA, I.C. §§ 67-6501 through 67-6537), cities and counties make two fundamentally different kinds of land use decisions.

The first kind is legislative: adopting or amending a comprehensive plan, changing the zoning code itself, annexing land, or establishing initial zoning upon annexation. These are policy decisions. The governing body has broad discretion, weighs community values, and the outcome can reflect political judgment. Public input at this stage is appropriate and important especially as you're setting the rules that will govern everyone going forward.

The second kind is quasi-judicial: deciding whether a specific application meets the standards already established in the code such as a conditional use permit, a subdivision plat, a variance, or a rezone of a particular parcel. These decisions are not meant to be based on open-ended policy decisions. They're determinations of fact and law. Does this application comply with the criteria in our ordinance, or doesn't it?

Idaho courts have been explicit about this distinction for decades. In Chambers v. Kootenai Cnty. Bd. of Comm'rs, 125 Idaho 115, 118 (1994), the Court held that zoning board decisions are "quasi-judicial in nature" because they "apply general rules to specific individuals, interests or situations," and are therefore subject to due process constraints. The quasi-judicial/legislative distinction first took root in Cooper v. Ada Cnty. Comm'rs, 101 Idaho 407, 411 (1980), where the Court held that rezoning a specific parcel unlike adopting a city-wide zoning ordinance is quasi-judicial in nature, entitling affected parties to due process protections.

"The neighbors don't like it" can't be a reason for denial

When a city acts in its quasi-judicial capacity on a permit application or a rezone, it is not conducting a popularity contest. The question before the body is narrow: does this application meet the express standards in our ordinance and comprehensive plan?

LLUPA is clear on this. I.C. § 67-6535 requires that any approval or denial of a permit application "shall be based upon standards and criteria which shall be set forth in the comprehensive plan, zoning ordinance or other appropriate ordinance or regulation." The decision must be in writing and must explain which standards were considered, which contested facts were relied upon, and why the decision follows from those standards and facts.

The same section makes the stakes plain: "Failure to identify the nature of compliance or noncompliance with express approval standards or failure to explain compliance or noncompliance with relevant decision criteria shall be grounds for invalidation" of the decision on appeal. (I.C. § 67-6535(1)(a).) An applicant denied a permit, or aggrieved by any final decision on a site-specific application, has 28 days after exhausting local remedies to seek judicial review in district court. (I.C. § 67-6521(1)(a).)

In plain terms: if a project meets the code, "the neighbors don't like it" is not a lawful basis for denial. And a denial issued without a written, reasoned explanation of which standards weren't met is vulnerable to being overturned on appeal.

Why this matters for housing reform

This distinction carries weight for cities working through zoning code updates and the wave of permit applications that follow.

When a city amends its comp plan or rewrites its zoning code to allow ADUs, small-lot subdivisions, or missing middle housing types, that's a legislative act. Wide public engagement at that stage builds durable community support for the policy. This is where residents should be shaping the rules.

But once those rules are in place, a builder who submits a compliant application is entitled to have it evaluated against those rules, not against the preferences of whoever showed up to the hearing. The hearing at that stage is still required by LLUPA for many permit types, and the applicant and affected neighbors must have notice and an opportunity to be heard. But the body's job is to apply the criteria in the ordinance to the facts in the record, not to act as a veto point for organized opposition.

This matters because the two contexts call for very different engagement strategies, and conflating them causes many housing developments to get shut down.

The problem with listening to whoever shows up

Research is consistent on who participates in local government land use proceedings. A 2017 study ("Who Participates in Local Government? Evidence from Meeting Minutes") found that compared to the general public, zoning meeting participants skew older, wealthier, and toward homeownership by roughly 25 percentage points. They are also more likely to oppose change.

Every week in hearings across Idaho, people who oppose housing show up to Planning & Zoning meetings and Council meetings. More rarely do we see people show up who want more housing. Then again, when you look at polling from Idaho Policy Institute, Change Research or Mountain States Policy Center, we see Idahoans rank housing as the number one issue they're concerned about. In a recent poll, eight in ten Idahoans said there are not enough homes to rent or buy in their area, while 72% of Idahoans say their city or town is not doing a good job at addressing housing affordability. All polling and surveys we seen are overwhelming in showing the same thing: that Idahoans want housing solutions. Strikingly, we know those perspectives don't show up in public hearings.

This skew doesn't mean public participation is bad. It means that cities need to work much harder to hear from the people who are most affected by housing costs but least likely to show up - while everyday Idahoans also need to work harder to participate in public processes.

What engaging all residents can look like

When a city is undertaking a comp plan amendment, a zoning code rewrite, or any other policy change that will set the rules going forward, the engagement goal should be a representative sample of the whole community, not just whoever has time to show up to a Tuesday night hearing.

Scientific polling gives you the clearest read on where your community actually stands. Phone or online surveys with a statistically significant sample are more affordable than ever, and in our experience, actual public opinion on housing reform is almost always more supportive than a packed opposition hearing suggests.

Community tabling at farmers markets, rodeos, festivals, and grocery stores reaches people who would never attend a planning meeting. They will stop and talk to you about whether their adult kids can afford to live nearby. That conversation is worth more than three minutes of public comment.

Stakeholder meetings with employers, faith communities, school districts, and neighborhood associations serve two purposes. They surface concerns early, when you can still address them in the policy design. And they create the conditions for respected community voices to show up and speak in support when it counts.

Interactive problem-solving sessions reframe the question. Instead of asking whether growth should happen, ask how. Give residents a map, a set of tradeoffs, and a good facilitator. People who are invited to solve a problem behave very differently from people who are invited to object to a proposal.

Hold meetings in the evenings and on weekends. Provide childcare. Advertise through social media, radio, and local newspapers. Hold sessions across different parts of the community, not just downtown. And once you've done broad engagement, don't fall into the "just one more meeting" trap that lets organized opposition delay a decision the community supports.

Start with shared concerns. A hospital system that can't recruit nurses, a chamber of commerce watching businesses struggle to hire, a congregation that can't house its own staff - these groups have stakes in the housing supply question even if they've never thought about floor area ratios.

Give stakeholders input into how the policy is designed. Groups that help build something are far more likely to defend it publicly. When the hearing comes, ask them to testify and reach out to their own networks. Opponents will always show up. The goal is to make sure they're not the only ones.

I want to again emphasize that the people who show up at 6pm on a Tuesday are not going to be the representative voices on whether or not they want more housing. It's important for our electeds to be aware of this - and the laws they're required to follow under LLUPA. It's even more important for everyday, regular people to get more engaged in policymaking by emailing and calling their electeds and even showing up to public hearings to tell them, quite simply, that they want more housing solutions, not less.