[belligeront]

The origins of zoning were to exclude black, Chinese, and jewish workers and residents from white neighborhoods. https://www.kqed.org/news/11840548/the-racist-history-of-sin...

Today, they continue to be used to exclude poorer residents from richer neighborhoods through mechanisms like minimum lot sizes (housing is much more expensive if you require 10000 sqft lots, etc.) and prohibitions of multi-family dwellings (which make housing cheaper by allowing multiple households to split the cost of land).

[refurb]

That doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t have to be a suburb to exclude non-whites. It could be an apartment building.

[JaimeThompson]

He didn't say zoning, he said homes so I was asking them why a single family home was elitist.

[bobthepanda]

The single family home zoning has the stuff like the minumum lot size and prohibitions on lot splitting or multiple homes on the same lot, which essentially sets a floor price to qualify for living there. And a minimum price will lead to minimum salary requirements for a mortgage, effectively locking out those below that income, hence elitism.

[ClumsyPilot]

its clearly more expensive than the alternative.

it excluded poorer people from the area