Solar NewtSources and credits
How One Ohio Town Changed American Housing
In 1922 a village council meeting in Euclid, Ohio set off a chain of decisions that still sits inside the largest bill you pay every month. Four years later the Supreme Court said the village could zone the way it did, and a century on America is short somewhere between 4 and 7 million homes. This page lists every source behind the video's claims and credits every piece of footage, image, sound and music in it.
Figures are dated in the video and below. Modern numbers, such as prices, shortage counts and the court cases still in progress, were current when the video was locked in September 2026 and will move.
Chapters
- 0:00A field in Euclid, Ohio, 1922
- 1:17Link 1 · The world before zoning
- 2:55Link 2 · The accident of the case
- 6:12Link 3 · The government mailroom
- 8:17Link 4 · Would it have happened anyway?
- 11:47Link 5 · The bill
- 13:23The verdict
- 14:47The moral, and what comes next
Sources (50)
Grouped by the links in the chain. Where historians or economists disagree, the video says so: the law clerk's account of the changed opinion is attributed rather than proven, the Chicago evidence cuts both ways, the builders' figure is the industry's own, and the Minneapolis result is contested.
The village and the case, 1922 to 1926
- Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co., 272 U.S. 365 (1926), official U.S. Reports scan (Library of Congress) and Legal Information Institute text: the ordinance, the 68-acre tract, the owner's valuation, the districts, the vote, and the "pig in the parlor" (388) and "parasite" (394) passages
- U.S. Census counts for Euclid, 1920 and 1930, as tabulated in Wikipedia's "Euclid, Ohio" article
- Ambler Realty Co. v. Village of Euclid, 297 F. 307 (N.D. Ohio 1924), Judge David C. Westenhaver, via CourtListener (the income-sorting passage at 316; the racial-zoning passage at 312 to 313)
- Encyclopedia of Cleveland History (Case Western Reserve University), "Baker, Newton Diehl"
- Richard H. Chused, "Euclid's Historical Imagery," 51 Case Western Reserve Law Review 597 (2001): the Bettman amicus brief and letter to Taft, the Fifth Avenue merchants, Edward Bassett, and the 50,000 Zoning Primer requests
- Alfred McCormack, "A Law Clerk's Recollections," 46 Columbia Law Review 710 (1946), the clerk's account of the changed opinion (attributed, not proven)
- Timothy Alan Fluck, "Euclid v. Ambler: A Retrospective," Journal of the American Planning Association 52(3), 1986
- Christopher Serkin, "A Case for Zoning," 95 Notre Dame Law Review 749 (2020): what the ordinance allowed, and Houston's covenants and density
- Ohio History Connection, historical marker 124-18, "Euclid v. Ambler Realty Site," 20001 Euclid Avenue (the wartime plant, Fisher Body 1948 to 1992, the New York City model)
The world before zoning
- New York City Building Zone Resolution, July 25, 1916
- Garrett Power, "Apartheid Baltimore Style: The Residential Segregation Ordinances of 1910 to 1913," 42 Maryland Law Review 289 (1983)
- Buchanan v. Warley, 245 U.S. 60 (1917)
- Robert Whitten, The Atlanta Zone Plan (1922), the race-zoning section (transcription)
- Bowen v. City of Atlanta, 159 Ga. 145 (1924), cited as the Georgia Supreme Court's ruling against Atlanta's race districts
- Corrigan v. Buckley, 271 U.S. 323 (1926); Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948)
- Allison Shertzer, Tate Twinam and Randall P. Walsh, "Zoning and Segregation in Urban Economic History," NBER Working Paper 28351: the Chicago bombings (after Tuttle, 1970), Fischel's homevoter account, the 1923 Chicago map, and McMillen and McDonald (1999) as the stated disagreement
- Robert M. Fogelson, Bourgeois Nightmares: Suburbia, 1870 to 1930 (Yale University Press, 2005), via Ann Forsyth's review on H-Net
The government mailroom
- U.S. Department of Commerce, A Standard State Zoning Enabling Act (1924 edition), foreword by Herbert Hoover
- U.S. Department of Commerce, A Zoning Primer (1922; revised edition 1926), with its list of zoned municipalities and states
- Bureau of Standards, Letter Circular LC-374 (Norman L. Knauss, 1933), zoning at the close of 1932
- American Planning Association, Growing Smart, "Enabling Acts"
Would it have happened anyway?
- Joseph Gyourko, Christopher Mayer and Todd Sinai, "Superstar Cities," NBER Working Paper 12355 (2006), Table 1
- Eric Kober, "Zoning That Works," City Journal (the 1961 New York rezoning, quoting the 1961 plan's preface)
- U.S. Census Bureau, 1960 Census of Population (New York City)
- Greg Morrow, "The Homeowner Revolution: Democracy, Land Use and the Los Angeles Slow-Growth Movement, 1965 to 1992," UCLA dissertation (2013)
- Friends of Mammoth v. Board of Supervisors, 8 Cal.3d 247 (1972); California Ballot Pamphlet, Primary Election June 6, 1978 (Proposition 13), UC Law SF repository
- Bernard H. Siegan, "Non-Zoning in Houston," 13 Journal of Law and Economics 71 (1970)
- Emily Hamilton, "Learning from Houston's Townhouse Reforms," Mercatus Center (2023); M. Nolan Gray and Adam A. Millsap, "Subdividing the Unzoned City," Journal of Planning Education and Research (2020) (estimates)
- Zillow Home Value Index, metro series (San Francisco and Houston, same index, same month)
- Brian J. Asquith, Evan Mast and Davin Reed, "Local Effects of Large New Apartment Buildings in Low-Income Areas," Review of Economics and Statistics 105(2), 2023
- Evan Mast, "The effect of new market-rate housing construction on the low-income housing market," Journal of Urban Economics 133, 2023
- Vicki Been, Ingrid Gould Ellen and Katherine O'Regan, "Supply Skepticism Revisited," Housing Policy Debate 35(1), 2024
- Austan Goolsbee and Chad Syverson, "The Strange and Awful Path of Productivity in the U.S. Construction Sector," NBER Working Paper 30845
- National Association of Home Builders, "Government Regulation in the Price of a New Home: 2026" (the industry's own number, as the video says)
The bill
- The New York Times, "Cities Start to Question an American Ideal: A House With a Yard on Every Lot," June 18, 2019, with zoning data from UrbanFootprint
- Cornell Chronicle, on the National Zoning Atlas and Connecticut, May 2022
- UC Berkeley Othering and Belonging Institute, single-family zoning in California, a statewide analysis
- Housing shortage counts: Freddie Mac (2021 and 2024); Up For Growth, Housing Underproduction in the U.S. (2023); Zillow (2024); National Association of Realtors and Rosen Consulting (2021)
- Joseph Gyourko and Jacob Krimmel, "The Impact of Local Residential Land Use Restrictions on Land Values Across and Within Single Family Housing Markets," NBER Working Paper 28993 (2021)
- Edward Glaeser and Joseph Gyourko, NBER Working Paper 33876 (2025)
- Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, America's Rental Housing 2026
- Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED), median sales price of houses sold (MSPUS) and U.S. Census median household income; the income-years series computed for this video
- National Association of Realtors, 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers (press release)
- U.S. Census Bureau housing starts by decade, via NAHB Eye on Housing, "A Decade of Home Building: The Long Recovery of the 2010s," January 2020
The verdict, and what came after
- Pew Charitable Trusts, "Minneapolis Land Use Reforms Offer a Blueprint for Housing Affordability," January 4, 2024; Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, "Unpacking supply and demand in rent trends since the Minneapolis 2040 Plan" (2025), the stated counter
- Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development, Housing Choices (House Bill 2001)
- City of Redondo Beach v. Bonta, B338990 (Cal. Ct. App., 2d Dist., November 12, 2025, unpublished), the SB 9 remand; Holland & Knight, November 2025
- Daily Montanan, "Montana Supreme Court reverses judge's decision that blocked residential zoning laws" (SB 323), September 4, 2024
- U.S. Census Bureau, QuickFacts, Euclid city, Ohio (2025 estimate; 2020 census); Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, "Euclid" (the 1970 peak)
Map data
- U.S. states outline, "Blank US Map (states only)," Heitordp, Wikimedia Commons, CC0
.svg){kind=link}
Credits
- Archival filmPrelinger Archives, via the Internet Archive: The Quiet Revolution (1956), Wheels of Progress (1927), To Market, To Market (1942), This Is the City (1958), The Rumor (1950), The Dynamic American City (1956), Miracle on the Delaware (1955), Highway Hearing (1956), Growth of Cities (1942) and unedited University of California, Berkeley footage (1960). Ford Motor Company Collection, National Archives: New York City (1919), New York City, Regional Geography (1921), a New York safety parade (1920), Washington, D.C., The Capital City (1922) and Ford Dealers Visit Ford Plants (1926). National Archives: Calvin Coolidge's first cabinet meeting (1923) and the newsreel compilation Boom Days (1920 to 1932). All public domain.
- Archival photographsEuclid Avenue, Cleveland, 1900 to 1905, Detroit Publishing Co.; traffic on Public Square and Euclid Avenue, 1927; Fifth Avenue, New York, 1913, Bain News Service; Roland Park, Baltimore, 1920 and 1926; Herbert Hoover laying a cornerstone, 1923; Washington row houses, 1920, and a house for sale, 1921, National Photo Company; a typing pool, Harris & Ewing; an unfinished hotel, Yakima, Dorothea Lange, Farm Security Administration. All Library of Congress, public domain. A land indenture, North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, via DPLA and Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
- PortraitsGeorge Sutherland, 1922, National Photo Company; Harlan F. Stone, Newton D. Baker, William Howard Taft as Chief Justice, and the Supreme Court of 1925, Harris & Ewing. All Library of Congress, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
- Documents shown on screenVillage of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co. in the U.S. Reports (Library of Congress); Buchanan v. Warley, Corrigan v. Buckley and Shelley v. Kraemer; A Standard State Zoning Enabling Act (1924) and A Zoning Primer (1926); Ohio historical marker 124-18 (Remarkable Ohio); the American Planning Association's Growing Smart page; America's Rental Housing 2026 (Harvard JCHS); City of Redondo Beach v. Bonta (2025); Census QuickFacts for Euclid, Ohio; the 1978 California ballot pamphlet for Proposition 13 (UC Law SF) and Article XIII A of the California Constitution. Shown briefly as evidence, each cited on screen.
- Aerial imageryGoogle Earth: Euclid, Ohio, and the former Ambler tract. Imagery NOAA, Landsat / Copernicus, Airbus; data SIO, U.S. Navy, NGA, GEBCO.
- Stock footageStoryblocks, under licence: city aerials, railroad, Supreme Court, housing, construction and moving footage.
- MusicYouTube Audio Library: "Wandering Soul," "Forest Lullabye" and "Across Seas," Asher Fulero; "Sarabande," Joel Cummins; "On The Flip," The Grey Room / Density & Time; "Aether," Density & Time.
- SoundTypewriter (Erika 5), Work With Sounds / Konrad Gutkowski, and running film projector, Work With Sounds / La Fonderie, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0. Page turn, planish, and pen writing, stephan, Wikimedia Commons, public domain. Title and end-card stings, tuesdaynight; gavel, IntrepidMedia; impact, Dragon Studio; pop, creatorshome; click (Pixabay). Stamp, chalk and camera-shutter sounds, Freesound (44189, 86723, 6305).