Zoning's War on Cuddly Animals, Cute Kids, and Christian Charity
A recent string of zoning controversies show how land use regulations have become the enemy of all good things.
Happy Tuesday, and welcome to another edition of Rent Free. As interesting as zoning policy is, writing about it can sometimes feel a little dry.
Writing and reading about local code updates and state legislative reforms can sometimes cause one to forget that zoning is the sum of all evils and the enemy of all good things.
To remind myself and loyal readers of that fact, this week's newsletter includes stories on zoning's war against cuddly animals, cute kids, and Christian charity.
- An Ohio court has dismissed a lawsuit brought by the fire chief of Bryon, Ohio, against a local church that had let people stay on its property overnight.
- A North Carolina court recently sided with the city of Winston-Salem in its efforts to shut down a local animal sanctuary, only because the sanctuary allowed people to visit the property.
- A new Manhattan Institute report details the exodus of families with young children from America's large, urban areas, and what can be done to coax them back.
Ohio Town Loses Civil Case Against Church's Overnight Ministry
This past week, an Ohio judge dismissed a civil lawsuit brought by the fire chief of Bryon, Ohio, against a local church that had been letting people stay on its property during its overnight ministry.
Fire Chief Douglas Pool's suit argued that local church Dad's Place had converted its property to a residential use by allowing nightly stays without getting the proper zoning approvals or adopting all the fire safety measures required of residential properties.
Rent Free Newsletter by Christian Britschgi. Get more of Christian's urban regulation, development, and zoning coverage.
His lawsuit demanded that Dad's Place stop its nighttime ministry until it installed a sprinkler system.
Dad's Place, and its pastor, Chris Avell, contended that the expense of installing a sprinkler system was cost-prohibitive for the church. The requirement to install one was thus an effective demand to shut down their nighttime ministry, which the church argued violated their Free Exercise rights.
Williams County Judge James D. Bates ruled that Pool's sprinkler-or-shutter demand was an unconstitutional restriction on Dad's Place's First Amendment rights to Free Exercise of religion.
In order to pass constitutional muster, Pool's demands for fire safety features had to further a "compelling interest" of the government's with the least restrictive means on Dad's Place—a standard known as strict scrutiny.
Bates wrote that because the city had waived the sprinkler requirement for nearby hotels but not Dad's Place, it had failed that strict scrutiny standard. He dismissed Pool's lawsuit with prejudice.
The ruling is only the latest episode in a long-running dispute between Bryon and Avell, who the city accuses of operating an illegal homeless shelter at the church's property.
In January 2024, the city of Bryon took the extraordinary step of criminally charging Avell with violations of the zoning and fire codes. Avell was convicted of those charges last year, and an appeal of his conviction is pending before the Ohio 6th District Court of Appeals.
"We praise God for this decision and the work it allows this church to continue in Bryan, Ohio," said Avell in a statement following the dismissal of Pool's lawsuit. "I consider it no coincidence that this decision comes during Holy Week as our church joins Christians worldwide to celebrate Christ's victory over death."
North Carolina Animal Sanctuary Will Appeal Zoning Ruling
The North Carolina Court of Appeals has sided with the city of Winston-Salem in its effort to close a nonprofit animal sanctuary that it says is operating an illegal commercial enterprise in a residential zone.
The animal sanctuary in question is Fairytale Farm, which was founded by Kimberly Dunckel in 2021 on her family's 3.3-acre farm property to care for neglected and abused farm animals.
As the animal shelter grew, the family started hosting ticketed fundraising events and recruiting volunteers to support its work. The events eventually attracted the attention of local zoning officials, who told Dunckel it was illegal for her to operate an animal sanctuary on her residentially zoned property.
While she could continue to keep the animals, the events (which the city considered commercial activity) had to stop. Dunckel was also told she could generally not have volunteers on the property to help care for the animals, either.
These restrictions would have effectively forced Dunckel and her family to get rid of the animals. To preserve the sanctuary, Dunckel sued Winston-Salem in 2023, arguing that the city's zoning restrictions on their events and ability to host volunteers violated North Carolina's constitution.
Key to her argument is that none of the individual activities associated with their shelter were generally prohibited under their property's residential zoning.
They could host visitors and parties on the property, provided they were purely social events. This activity only became illegal when done in the service of supporting a "commercial" animal sanctuary, and not because of any negative neighborhood impacts they caused.
City officials would not give precise information on how many people she could host at the animal sanctuary or what they were legally allowed to do there.
For these reasons, Dunckel argued that the city's restrictions were irrational and arbitrary.
The city countered that it was perfectly within its rights to protect exclusively residential zones through restrictions on commercial events.
A lower court issued a summary judgment in favor of the city in February 2025. The appeals court affirmed that judgment last week.
While Dunckel had presented evidence that her farm was having no negative impacts on noise, traffic, and odors on nearby properties, that was ultimately irrelevant, reads the Court of Appeals decision.
"Plaintiffs' attempts to analyze the discrete segments of a commercial use overlooks the fact Plaintiffs are still using the property in a commercial manner even if some of the negative impacts are not present based on the factual record before us," reads the court's opinion.
In a statement, attorneys with the Institute for Justice, who are representing Dunckel, said that they will appeal to the state's Supreme Court.
The appeals court's ruling is a good reminder that zoning codes don't directly regulate the negative externalities and neighborhood impacts. They instead play word games about what counts as "commercial" or "residential" uses, even if the distinction is completely invisible to the neighbors.
How America's Big Cities Got So Family-Unfriendly
The past five years have seen a massive exodus of families with younger children from the largest urban areas, according to a new Manhattan Institute report authored by Connor O'Brien and Liena Zagare.
"Between early 2020 and mid-2024, the population of children under five years old declined by 7% in large urban counties, which is more than twice the nationwide rate of decline," write O'Brien and Zagare, noting that there were even more severe declines in the largest counties.
New York City saw its under-five population shrink by nearly a fifth since 2020. Cook County, which contains Chicago, Los Angeles County, and San Francisco all saw a similar decline in their under-five populations.
The report's authors attribute the direct causes of the falling population of urban young families to pandemic-era outmigration and collapsing fertility rates.
While fertility rates are falling nationwide, large urban areas have experienced the biggest drop. In the early 2000s, the densest areas had higher fertility rates than medium-density areas. Today, the densest areas have by far the lowest fertility rates.
The authors of the report identify three root causes for the exodus of young families from urban areas: rising child care costs and declining school quality, rising crime, and the rising cost of family-sized units.
"Families are uniquely sensitive to issues like public safety and school quality and are the backbone of functional, tightly knit communities. Losing families in large numbers is a sign that a city is failing to provide the fundamental building blocks of urban life," they write.
O'Brien and Zagare recommend a number of policies cities could adopt to make themselves more family-friendly. To reduce housing costs, cities should repeal zoning restrictions on new housing. They could also provide incentives to construct family-sized, three-bedroom units.
They also suggest expanding school choice programs to improve educational quality and redesigning the streetscape to be safer and more convenient for families pushing strollers.
As this newsletter has covered before, there's a healthy debate about whether urban density is per se family unfriendly. Evidence from around the globe suggests that people who live in the densest housing in the densest areas tend to have the lowest fertility rates.
Nevertheless, even the densest American cities could likely permit a lot more apartments without turning into Asia's childless megacities.
My own unempirical view is that expanding school choice is cities' best option for attracting and retaining families.
To the degree that families value additional private space over anything else, lower-density suburbs where land costs are lower (and residential square footage is consequently cheaper) will likely always have a natural advantage at attracting children.
In contrast, the effects of urban agglomeration make big cities the ideal environments for providing a wealth of educational options.
Highly specialized industries tend to locate in large urban areas because big cities have the large populations necessary to support the large number of specialized firms and workers those industries need.
A tech worker in a small city is going to have very limited employment options. In San Francisco, they'll have many more. Tech firms likewise want to locate in San Francisco, because that's where all the labor is.
Similarly, a small city might only be able to support a single Catholic or Montessori school. A major city can provide parents with many different Catholic or Montessori schools, plus more that focus on STEM or Latin or whatever else, to choose from.
Of course, most big cities are not capitalizing on this advantage because they tend to be located in jurisdictions where state and local policies are hostile to school choice.
More school choice programs, paired with better public safety and supply-side housing reforms, could make big cities a magnet for young families seeking the best for their children.
Quick Links
- The Washington Post on the danger of the build-to-rent restrictions included in Congress' housing bill.
- No matter how bad American building regulations get, the United Kingdom's will always be worse.
oh my god. https://t.co/0vAAYP5gKZ pic.twitter.com/KuGOmBXViX
— Tom Harwood (@tomhfh) April 6, 2026
- Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D–Mass.) has caused a stir on social media for describing evictions as "an act of violence" while promoting a new bill that would fund legal counsel for tenants facing evictions.
Housing is a human right and evictions are an act of policy violence.
My HELP Act would give a lifeline to families facing eviction and vital resources during this time of crisis. pic.twitter.com/RyU1dkBe05
— Ayanna Pressley (@AyannaPressley) April 3, 2026
- The federal environmental review process delayed repairs to a D.C. sewer line for years before the line eventually broke earlier this year, causing one of the worst wastewater spills in U.S. history.
- Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson proposes a "taller, denser, faster" upzoning plan than the one the city had been working on before she came into office.
- In a recent op-ed, left-wing D.C. City council member and mayoral candidate Janeese Lewis George proposes a long list of regulatory reforms, from eliminating parking minimums to shrinking minimum lot sizes, to bring down housing costs.
- A Catholic Church in Park Hills, Kentucky, is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the town zoning board's rejection of a shrine it plans to build on its property.
- The Council of D.C. has cast a first vote in favor of a bill that would allow apartment buildings of up to six stories to be built with one staircase.
