UCLA Housing Voice

What makes people more or less supportive of dense housing in their communities? David Kaufmann and Michael Wicki surveyed 12,000 residents in six of the largest U.S. and European cities to find out.

Show notes:

• Wicki, M., Hofer, K., & Kaufmann, D. (2022). Planning instruments enhance the acceptance of urban densification. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(38), e2201780119.
• Debrunner, G., Hofer, K., Wicki, M., Kauer, F., & Kaufmann, D. (2024). Housing Precarity in Six European and North American Cities: Threatened by the Loss of a Safe, Stable, and Affordable Home. Journal of the American Planning Association, 1-17.

Subsidized affordable housing development reduces costs for lower-income households directly. It also reduces costs indirectly, by increasing the overall supply of housing — or does it? Michael Eriksen joins to discuss the issue of “crowd out” in affordable housing production.

Show notes:

• Eriksen, M. D., & Rosenthal, S. S. (2010). Crowd out effects of place-based subsidized rental housing: New evidence from the LIHTC program. Journal of Public Economics, 94(11-12), 953-966.
• Cummings, J. L., & DiPasquale, D. (1999). The Low‐Income Housing Tax Credit: An analysis of the first ten years. Housing Policy Debate, 10(2), 251-307.
• Click here for Pathways Home, our eight-part series on homelessness.
• Baum-Snow, N., & Marion, J. (2009). The effects of low income housing tax credit developments on neighborhoods. Journal of Public Economics, 93(5-6), 654-666.
• Diamond, R., & McQuade, T. (2019). Who wants affordable housing in their backyard? An equilibrium analysis of low-income property development. Journal of Political Economy, 127(3), 1063-1117.

In this final installment of the Pathways Home series on homelessness policy and research, we discuss lessons and key takeaways from the previous seven episodes with our UCLA colleague, Janey Rountree.

Show notes:

• Click here to find all eight episodes of the Pathways Home limited series on homelessness.
• Blackwell, B., & Santillano, R. (2023). Do Time-Limited Subsidy Programs Reduce Homelessness for Single Adults? California Policy Lab.

Since 2009, homelessness among U.S. veterans has fallen by more than half. Among the overall population, it hasn’t budged. Monica Diaz and Shawn Liu of the Department of Veterans Affairs share some of the story behind the VA's success.

Show notes:

• Read more about the VA Homeless Programs Office at their website.
• Khadduri, J., de Sousa, T., Andrichik, A., Prestera, E., Rush, K., Tano, C., and Wheeler, M. (2023). The 2023 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress. Part 1: Point-In-Time Estimates of Homelessness. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Planning and Research.
• Colburn, G., & Aldern, C. P. (2022). Homelessness is a Housing Problem: How structural factors explain US patterns. University of California Press.
• O’Toole, T., & Kane, V. (2014). Return on Investment Analysis and Modeling (white paper). VA National Center on Homelessness Among Veterans, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
• O'Flaherty, B. (2019). Homelessness research: A guide for economists (and friends). Journal of Housing Economics, 44, 1-25.

The Housing First approach starts with providing homes to chronically unhoused people, but it doesn’t stop there — and that’s what makes it so effective. Tim Aubry shares findings from a major Housing First study and the keys to a successful program.

Show notes:

• Goering, P., Veldhuizen, S., Watson, A., Adair, C., Kopp, B., Latimer, E., Nelson, G., MacNaughton, E., Streiner, D., Rabouin, D., Ly, A., Powell, G., & Aubry, T., (2014). National Final Report: Cross-Site At Home/Chez Soi Project. Mental Health Commission of Canada.
• UCLA Housing Voice episode 64, with Beth Shinn, talking about effective interventions to family homelessness and a brief mention of Housing First.
• Aubry, T., Bloch, G., Brcic, V., Saad, A., Magwood, O., Abdalla, T., ... & Pottie, K. (2020). Effectiveness of permanent supportive housing and income assistance interventions for homeless individuals in high-income countries: a systematic review. The Lancet Public Health, 5(6), e342-e360.

What happens when you provide unhoused people with a large sum of money? Jiaying Zhao shares the results of a study in Vancouver, BC, which include reduced shelter use, more spending on food and rent, and no increase in spending on “temptation goods” like drugs and alcohol.

Show notes:

• Dwyer, R., Palepu, A., Williams, C., Daly-Grafstein, D., & Zhao, J. (2023). Unconditional cash transfers reduce homelessness. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(36), e2222103120.
• Mullainathan, S., & Shafir, E. (2013). Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much. Macmillan.
• Brisson, D., Calhoun, K. H., Coddington, L., Flaxman, Z. J., Johnsen, M., & Locke, S. (2023). Denver Basic Income Project Interim Report. Center for Housing and Homelessness Research, University of Denver Graduate School of Social Work.

“We have the resources, as a society, to prevent and end homelessness. And the knowledge.” Beth Shinn discusses the Family Options Study, which found that long-term housing subsidies, like housing vouchers, led to much better outcomes at similar cost compared to rapid rehousing, transitional housing, and “usual care.”

Show notes:

• Gubits, D., Shinn, M., Wood, M., Bell, S., Dastrup, S., Solari, C., Brown, S., McInnis, D., McCall, T., & Kattel, U. (2016). Family options study: 3-year impacts of housing and services interventions for homeless families. Available at SSRN 3055295.
• Shinn, M., & Khadduri, J. (2020). In the midst of plenty: Homelessness and what to do about it. John Wiley & Sons.
• To learn more about housing choice vouchers: UCLA Housing Voice Podcast, Episode 17: Housing Vouchers with Rob Collinson.
• Aubry, T., Nelson, G., & Tsemberis, S. (2015). Housing first for people with severe mental illness who are homeless: a review of the research and findings from the at home—chez soi demonstration project. The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 60(11), 467-474.
• Cunningham, M., Galvez, M., & Peiffer, E. (2018). Landlords limit voucher holders’ choice in where they can live. Urban Institute.
• Costs of homelessness in Santa Clara (not San Mateo) County: Flaming, D., Toros, H., & Burns, P. (2015). Home not found: The cost of homelessness in silicon valley. Economic Roundtable.
• National Alliance to End Homelessness. State of Homelessness: 2021 Edition.
• Learn more about research on the Moving to Opportunity experiment.

In Los Angeles County, unhoused people living in cars, trucks, and RVs outnumber those in tents and makeshift shelters by 50%, yet vehicular homelessness receives relatively little attention. Many cities don’t even measure or report on it — at least not yet. The Lewis Center’s Madeline Brozen joins to discuss her research on the distinct demographics and experiences of unhoused people living out of their vehicles, and the promise of safe parking programs to support the transition back into stable housing.

Show notes:

• Giamarino, C., Brozen, M., & Blumenberg, E. (2023). Planning for and against vehicular homelessness: Spatial trends and determinants of vehicular dwelling in Los Angeles. Journal of the American Planning Association, 89(1), 80-92.
• Giamarino, C., Blumenberg, E., & Brozen, M. (2022). Who Lives in Vehicles and Why? Understanding Vehicular Homelessness in Los Angeles. Housing Policy Debate, 1-14.
• Episode 53 of UCLA Housing Voice, with Vinit Mukhija on informal housing.
• Read more about the 2023 National Point-In-Time Homeless Count, which showed a 12% increase from the previous year, to 653,000 people.
• Wakin, M. (2013). Otherwise Homeless: Vehicle living and the culture of homelessness. Lynne Rienner Publishers.
• Visit TheyCountWillYou.org to volunteer for the annual Point-In-Time Homeless Count in Los Angeles County on January 24-26, 2024. If you live in another part of the U.S., search online for a homeless count happening near you.
• Click here to learn more about the New Beginnings safe parking program in Santa Barbara.

Many people think they know about the lives of people experiencing homelessness, but those perceptions are often based on anecdote. Margot Kushel, MD joins us to talk about her work on the largest representative study of homelessness since the 1990s, and what it says about who experiences homelessness, why they become homeless, their experiences while living without housing, and barriers to re-entering stable housing.

Show notes:

• Kushel, M., & Moore, T. (2023). Towards a New Understanding: The California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness. University of California, San Francisco Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative.
• Colburn, G. (2023). Episode 61: Homelessness is a Housing Problem with Gregg Colburn (Pathways Home pt. 1), Housing Voice Podcast, UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies.
• Khadduri, J. & Shinn, M. (2020). In the Midst of Plenty: Homelessness and What to Do About It. Wiley-Blackwell.
• Hahn, J. A., Kushel, M. B., Bangsberg, D. R., Riley, E., & Moss, A. R. (2006). Brief report: The aging of the homeless population: Fourteen-year trends in San Francisco. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 21(7), 775–778. 
• Schaeffer, K. (2022, March 23). Key facts about housing affordability in the U.S. Pew Research Center. 
• Executive summary of the Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness.
• More reading about Los Angeles’s efforts to accelerate housing placements for people experiencing homelessness.

Part one of Pathways Home, a six-part series on homelessness. Gregg Colburn, author of Homelessness is a Housing Problem, dispels myths about the causes of homelessness and identifies two key risk factors that explain why rates vary so much between cities: high rents and low vacancies.

Show notes:

• Colburn, G., & Aldern, C. P. (2022). Homelessness is a Housing Problem: How structural factors explain US patterns. University of California Press.
• O’Flaherty, B. (2004). Wrong person and wrong place: For homelessness, the conjunction is what matters. Journal of Housing Economics, 13(1), 1-15.
• Glaeser, E. L., & Gyourko, J. (2005). Urban decline and durable housing. Journal of political economy, 113(2), 345-375.
• Kushel, M., & Moore, T. (2023). Towards a New Understanding: The California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness. University of California, San Francisco Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative.
• George, H. (1879). Progress and Poverty. Published for the Henry George Foundation of Great Britain by the Hogarth Press. 
• Shinn, M., & Khadduri, J. (2020). In the midst of plenty: Homelessness and what to do about it. Wiley Blackwell. 
• UCLA Housing Voice Episode 21: What to Do About Homelessness with Beth Shinn.

The federal government passed the Fair Housing Act more than 50 years ago. In that time considerable progress has been made at reducing discrimination in the housing market, but the law’s mandate to “affirmatively further fair housing” and reverse patterns of segregation has been only lightly enforced. Katherine O’Regan of NYU, and formerly of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, joins Mike and Shane to talk about the legacy of the Fair Housing Act, the changing nature of neighborhood segregation and opportunity in America, and recent efforts to proactively foster inclusive communities using fair housing laws.

Show notes:

• O’Regan, K. (2018). The Fair Housing Act Today: Current Context and Challenges at 50. Housing Policy Debate.
• O’Regan, K., & Zimmerman, K. (2019). The Potential of the Fair Housing Act's Affirmative Mandate and HUD's AFFH Rule. Cityscape, 21(1), 87-98.
• Kerner Commission Report, including a summary by UC Berkeley's Othering and Belonging Institute.

Housing scarcity is linked to higher rents and house prices, but it’s rarely connected to the cost and reach of safety net programs — and it should be. Kevin Corinth joins to share his research on how increasing housing production in supply-constrained cities can help the government serve many more households with rent assistance.

Show notes:

• Corinth, K., & Irvine, A. (2023). JUE Insight: The Effect of Relaxing Local Housing Market Regulations on Federal Rental Assistance Programs. Journal of Urban Economics, 103572.
• Molloy, R., Nathanson, C. G., & Paciorek, A. (2022). Housing supply and affordability: Evidence from rents, housing consumption and household location. Journal of Urban Economics, 129, 103427.
• Glaeser, E., & Gyourko, J. (2018). The economic implications of housing supply. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 32(1), 3-30.
• Episode 16 of UCLA Housing Voice, on Japanese housing policy with Jiro Yoshida.
• Episode 17 of UCLA Housing Voice, on housing vouchers with Rob Collinson. 
• Eriksen, M. D., & Rosenthal, S. S. (2010). Crowd out effects of place-based subsidized rental housing: New evidence from the LIHTC program. Journal of Public Economics, 94(11-12), 953-966.
• Episode 45 of UCLA Housing Voice, on the impact of Auckland’s upzoning with Ryan Greenaway-McGrevy.

Does discretion delay development, or do deliberate decisions divert disaster? Paavo and Mike M. share new Lewis Center research comparing approval timelines for discretionary and by-right projects, and they discuss the consequences of slow and uncertain approval processes for housing production, affordability, and public trust.

Show notes:

• Manville, M., Monkkonen, P., Gray, N., & Phillips, S. (2023). Does Discretion Delay Development? The Impact of Approval Pathways on Multifamily Housing’s Time to Permit. Journal of the American Planning Association, 89(3), 336-347.
• Episode 27 of UCLA Housing Voice with Nolan Gray.
• Kim, M. (2020). Negotiation or schedule-based? Examining the strengths and weaknesses of the public benefit exaction strategies of Boston and Seattle. Journal of the American Planning Association, 86(2), 208-221.
• Episode 8 of UCLA Housing Voice with Minjee Kim.
• Manville, M., & Osman, T. (2017). Motivations for growth revolts: Discretion and pretext as sources of development conflict. City & Community, 16(1), 66-85.
• On parcel-level planning: Manville, M., & Monkkonen, P. (2021). Unwanted housing: Localism and politics of housing development. Journal of Planning Education and Research.

How does the neighborhood you live in affect your health? Craig Pollack, MD, joins to discuss the relationship between neighborhood poverty and asthma symptoms, the medical establishment’s growing role in the housing sector, and how better housing policy can lead to improved public health.

Show notes:

• Pollack, C. E., Roberts, L. C., Peng, R. D., Cimbolic, P., Judy, D., Balcer-Whaley, S., ... & Matsui, E. C. (2023). Association of a Housing Mobility Program With Childhood Asthma Symptoms and Exacerbations. JAMA, 329(19), 1671-1681.
• Sanbonmatsu, L., J. Ludwig, L. F. Katz, L. A. Gennetian, G. J. Duncan, R. C. Kessler, E. Adam, T. McDade, and S. T. Lindau (2011). Moving to Opportunity for Fair Housing Demonstration Program: Final Impacts Evaluation. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research.
• Episode 17 of UCLA Housing Voice: Housing Vouchers with Rob Collinson.
• Bergman, P., Chetty, R., DeLuca, S., Hendren, N., Katz, L. F., & Palmer, C. (2019). Creating moves to opportunity: Experimental evidence on barriers to neighborhood choice (No. w26164). National Bureau of Economic Research.
• Chetty, R., Hendren, N., & Katz, L. F. (2016). The effects of exposure to better neighborhoods on children: New evidence from the moving to opportunity experiment. American Economic Review, 106(4), 855-902.
• Pollack, C. E., Bozzi, D. G., Blackford, A. L., DeLuca, S., Thornton, R. L., & Herring, B. (2023). Using the Moving to Opportunity experiment to investigate the long-term impact of neighborhoods on healthcare use by specific clinical conditions and type of service. Housing Policy Debate, 33(1), 269-289.
• Program information on the Housing For Health program in Los Angeles County.
• More background on Housing For Health and its impact from the Rand Corporation blog.

The modern mortgage: fixed-rate, low interest, 30-year term, 80% loan-to-value, amortizing. It wouldn’t exist without the backing of the federal government, but how and why was it created? And what were the consequences for the housing market and broader economy? Judge Glock joins us to share the surprising history of the modern home mortgage, the strange bedfellows who fought for its creation, and its relationship to a century of bank bailouts.

Show notes:

• Glock, J. E. (2021). The Dead Pledge: The Origins of the Mortgage Market and Federal Bailouts, 1913–1939. Columbia University Press.
• Gillman, H. (1993). The Constitution Besieged: The rise and demise of Lochner era police powers jurisprudence. Duke University Press.
• Seligman, L. G., & Cornwell, E. E. (1965). New Deal Mosaic: Roosevelt Confers with His National Emergency Council, 1933-1936.

Studies in Latin America show that “secure tenure” —- protections against displacement by the government — can encourage resident-led development and economic growth in slum areas, as well as improve public health. Is the same true in the African context? And what happens if the government also provides quality, affordable housing along with secure tenure? Singumbe Muyeba joins us to share the results of his research on a slum upgrading program in Nairobi, Kenya.

Show notes:

• Muyeba, S. (2023). Property rights and health for the urban housing poor in Nairobi: Evidence from a phased-in natural experiment. Journal of Urban Affairs, 45(3), 590-615.
• Bah, E. H. M., Faye, I., Geh, Z. F., Bah, E. H. M., Faye, I., & Geh, Z. F. (2018). The housing sector in Africa: Setting the scene. Housing Market Dynamics in Africa, 1-21.
• Vogl, T. S. (2007). Urban land rights and child nutritional status in Peru, 2004. Economics & Human Biology, 5(2), 302-321.
• Galiani, S., & Schargrodsky, E. (2004). Effects of land titling on child health. Economics & Human Biology, 2(3), 353-372.
• Galiani, S., & Schargrodsky, E. (2010). Property rights for the poor: Effects of land titling. Journal of Public Economics, 94(9-10), 700-729.
• Monkkonen, P. (2012). The demand for land regularisation: Theory and evidence from Tijuana, Mexico. Urban Studies, 49(2), 271-288.
• Monkkonen, P. (2016). Where do property rights matter more? Explaining the variation in demand for property titles across cities in Mexico. World development, 88, 67-78.
• Episode 32 of UCLA Housing Voice with Diego Gil on Chile’s “Enabling Markets” policy, which the World Bank and others advocated for other developing countries.

Condos don’t cause gentrification; gentrification causes condos. That’s the verdict of Leah Boustan and Robert Margo, who come on the show to discuss their research on condominium conversion restrictions in US cities. In addition to their research results, we talk about the (surprisingly short) history of condo ownership, the unintended consequences of condo restrictions, and the way other policies like HOA governance and rent control influence the popularity of owner-occupied multifamily housing.

Show notes:

• Boustan, L., Margo, R. A., Miller, M. M., Reeves, J., & Steil, J. (2023). JUE Insight: Condominium development does not lead to gentrification. Journal of Urban Economics, 133, 103524.
• Diamond, R., McQuade, T., & Qian, F. (2019). The effects of rent control expansion on tenants, landlords, and inequality: Evidence from San Francisco. American Economic Review, 109(9), 3365-3394.
• Fetter, D. K. (2016). The Home Front: The Home Front: Rent Control and the Rapid Wartime Increase in Home Ownership. The Journal of Economic History, 76(4), 1001-1043.

In our last episode we talked with Vinit Mukhija about how informal and incremental development is reshaping single-family housing cities in the Global North. This time Prof. Mukhija is back, getting into the weeds of the policies and politics driving those changes. What are the keys to successful accessory dwelling unit and second unit housing policy, and how do we find the right balance between local control and the intervention of state legislatures?

Show notes:

• Mukhija, V. (2022). Remaking the American Dream: The Informal and Formal Transformation of Single-Family Housing Cities. MIT Press.
• The Los Angeles Times You Do ADU Newsletter.
• Floor plan of Lennar’s “Home Within a Home” new-build housing with interior second unit.
• A history of state ADU reform in California: Casey, D. (2021). A Guide to Ending Single-Family Zoning: Lessons Learned from 39 Years of ADU Legislation. California Renters Legal Advocacy and Education Fund.
• Furth, S., and Remington, J. (2021, April 27). Ordinances at Work: Seven Communities That Welcome Accessory Dwelling Units. Mercatus Center.
• AARP. (2021). Accessory Dwelling Units Model State Act and Local Ordinance.
• Another resource on ADUs: AccessoryDwellings.org.
• Peterson, K. (2018). Backdoor Revolution: The Definitive Guide to ADU Development. Accessory Dwelling Strategies, LLC.
• Crane, R. E. (2020). Is Granny in that Flat? How Regulations Shape the Construction and Use of Accessory Dwelling Units in Los Angeles. University of California, Los Angeles. 
• Marantz, N., Elmendorf, C., & Kim, Y. B. (2023). Evaluating California’s Accessory Dwelling Unit Reforms: Preliminary Evidence and Lessons for State Governments. NYU Furman Center.
• Durning, A. (2020, February 21). One of North America’s Boldest Housing Initiatives Has Reached Its End: Did It Work? Sightline Institute.

Does your neighbor have an unpermitted home in their backyard? It’s more likely than you think, and it may be filling a valuable niche in the housing market. Vinit Mukhija of the UCLA Dept. of Urban Planning joins us to talk about his new book, Remaking the American Dream, and how informal and incremental housing is reshaping single-family neighborhoods. This is part one of a two-part series; in part two we’ll get into the weeds on accessory dwelling units (aka backyard cottages, granny flats, etc.) and debate the merits of state intervention in local housing policy.

Show notes:

• Mukhija, V. (2022). Remaking the American Dream: The Informal and Formal Transformation of Single-Family Housing Cities. MIT Press.
• Background on the City of Los Angeles’ Unpermitted Dwelling Unit Ordinance.
• More info on the LA-Más ADU pilot program with LA County.
• Mukhija, V. (2017). Squatters as Developers? Slum Redevelopment in Mumbai. Routledge.

We spend billions of dollars on affordable housing development every year, but many units lose their protections and return to market prices after a few decades. Why do we do things this way? Annette Kim joins us to discuss this problem, community land trusts as a strategy for solving it, and the benefits and obstacles to scaling them up.

Show notes:

• Kim, A. M., & Eisenlohr, A. (2022). Community Land Trusts for Sustainably Affordable Rental Housing Redevelopment. Cityscape, 24(1), 233-256.
• Kim, A. M. (2015). Sidewalk City: Remapping Public Space in Ho Chi Minh City. University of Chicago Press.
• Episode 41 on shared-equity homeownership with William Cheung and Kelvin Wong.
• Feasibility analysis for increasing affordability covenant duration to 99 years in City of Los Angeles.
• From the Lewis Center: Phillips, S. (2020). Increasing the Duration of Affordability Requirements for New Affordable Housing.
• Reyes, E. A., & Menezes, R. (Mar 7, 2014). L.A. and Orange counties are an epicenter of overcrowded housing. Los Angeles Times.

Where are evictions most common? You might assume the answer is gentrifying neighborhoods, but evictions are actually most prevalent in areas of concentrated, persistent disadvantage. Joined by co-author (and regular co-host) Mike Lens, Kyle Nelson discusses his research on two eviction types in Southern California — court-based “at-fault” evictions and administrative “no-fault” evictions — including the different motivations behind them, where they’re distributed, and how we might prevent them.

Show notes:

• Nelson, K., Gromis, A., Kuai, Y., & Lens, M. C. (2021). Spatial concentration and spillover: Eviction dynamics in neighborhoods of Los Angeles, California, 2005–2015. Housing Policy Debate, 31(3-5), 670-695.
• Lens, M. C., Nelson, K., Gromis, A., & Kuai, Y. (2020). The neighborhood context of eviction in Southern California. City & Community, 19(4), 912-932.
• Episode 47 with Hyojung Lee on gentrification and displacement.
• Syphilis Explosion billboards!

In the years leading up to the Global Financial Crisis, Spain’s housing prices doubled and its immigrant population increased by 1000%. How did immigrants fare when the market crashed? Carlos Delclós joins us to discuss the “citizen gradient” among Spanish citizens, EU citizens living in Spain, and non-EU citizens and how citizenship status influences housing precarity and displacement outcomes.

Show notes:

• Delclós, C. (2022). The burden of the border: Precarious citizenship experiences in the wake of the Spanish housing crash. European Urban and Regional Studies.
• Ealham, C. (2010). Anarchism and the City: Revolution and Counter-revolution in Barcelona, 1898–1937. AK Press.https://doi.org/10.1177/09697764221136092
• Interactive FRED graph of real residential property prices for select countries, including Spain.
• Gonick, S. L. (2021). Dispossession and Dissent: Immigrants and the Struggle for Housing in Madrid. Stanford University Press.
• Clair, A., Reeves, A., McKee, M., & Stuckler, D. (2019). Constructing a housing precariousness measure for Europe. Journal of European Social Policy, 29(1), 13-28.
• Kain, J. F., & Quigley, J. M. (1972). Housing market discrimination, home-ownership, and savings behavior. The American Economic Review, 62(3), 263-277.
• Taylor, K. Y. (2019). Race for Profit: How banks and the real estate industry undermined black homeownership. UNC Press Books.
• Yiftachel, O. (2020). From displacement to displaceability: A southeastern perspective on the new metropolis. City, 24(1-2), 151-165.
• Caroz-Armayones, J. M., Benach, J., Delclós, C., & Julià, M. (2022). The double burden of precariousness: linking housing, employment, and perceived stress–a cross-sectional study. International Journal of Environmental Health Research, 1-10.
• Housing Voice ep. 49 with Sorcha Edwards, on sustaining and growing Europe’s social housing.

It’s difficult to sustain a social housing program, but it’s even harder to build one from scratch. Housing Europe, a coalition of social, public, and cooperative housing providers, is trying to do both. Sorcha Edwards, who serves as Secretary General of Housing Europe, joins us to share their efforts to expand the footprint of non-profit and limited-profit housing across the continent — maintaining established programs like those in Austria and Finland, and growing them in places like Spain, where only about 1% of housing units are rented social housing. We also discuss the International Social Housing Festival, happening this year in Barcelona on June 7-9, and the lessons and inspiration that can be drawn from practitioners around the globe.

Show notes:

• Report: The State of Housing in Europe, 2021. Housing Europe.
• More about Matongé, Brussels: Matonge, an African home in Brussels.
• Website for the International Social Housing Festival, in Barcelona June 7-9, 2023.
• Website for the Het Schip Social Housing Museum.
• O’Sullivan, F. (July 16 2020). To Fill Vacant Units, Barcelona Seizes Apartments. Bloomberg.
• Phillips, S. (April 18 2023). To improve housing affordability, Spain needs more rental housing. International Social Housing Festival blog post.

Housing is the largest source of wealth for most U.S. households, and wealth influences household decisions and opportunities in myriad ways. One is work: when people experience a significant loss of wealth, such as during an economic recession, they may remain in the workforce longer than planned, or even come out of retirement and return to work. But housing wealth is different from a stock portfolio or other assets, and previous research has failed to establish clear links between rising or falling home values and retirement decisions. Jaclene Begley joins us to discuss new research that establishes a connection, but with surprising nuances. We discuss what makes housing wealth unique, and the ways it affects work and retirement decisions differently for men than women, when home values rise rather than fall, and when housing wealth declines a little rather than a lot. We also step back and talk about the broader consequences of relying on housing as most households' primary source of wealth and retirement nest egg.

Show notes:

• Begley, J., & Chan, S. (2018). The effect of housing wealth shocks on work and retirement decisions. Regional Science and Urban Economics, 73, 180-195.
• Quigley, J. M., & Raphael, S. (2004). Is housing unaffordable? Why isn't it more affordable? Journal of Economic Perspectives, 18(1), 191-214.

Does gentrification lead to increased displacement of vulnerable low-income households? To date, research findings have been surprisingly mixed. One explanation may be that most gentrification studies focus on individual cities, which vary substantially from place to place, or the entire U.S., which may overlook local or regional differences. Hyojung Lee joins us to discuss his new study with coauthor Kristin Perkins which categorizes the country into eight unique geographies according to shared characteristics, searching for differences in how gentrification impacts displacement of low-income households. It persuasively finds that gentrification does lead to more household moves — and importantly, more downward moves — and can hopefully inform further research and more location-appropriate anti-displacement strategies.

Show notes:

• Lee, H., & Perkins, K. L. (2022). The geography of gentrification and residential mobility. Social Forces, soac086.
• Read more about the Cheonggyecheon freeway removal here.
• Freeman, L., & Braconi, F. (2004). Gentrification and displacement New York City in the 1990s. Journal of the American Planning Association, 70(1), 39-52.
• Ellen, I. G., & O'Regan, K. (2011). Gentrification: Perspectives of economists and planners. The Oxford Handbook of Urban Economics and Planning, 371–391.
• Hwang, J., & Ding, L. (2020). Unequal displacement: gentrification, racial stratification, and residential destinations in Philadelphia. American Journal of Sociology, 126(2), 354-406.
• UCLA Housing Voice podcast episode 7 with Kristin Perkins.
• UCLA Housing Voice podcast episode 12 with Elizabeth Delmelle.

Manufactured housing is the largest source of unsubsidized affordable housing in the U.S., and one of the only ways that low-income households are able to access homeownership. Due to a mix of public policies and social stigma, these homes are often found in manufactured housing communities, colloquially known as mobile home parks or trailer parks — and in recent years, these communities have increasingly been under threat by predatory investors or by closures, whether for redevelopment or otherwise. Esther Sullivan joins us to discuss her ethnographic research on the closure of mobile home communities in Florida and Texas and how residents experience eviction in both states. She finds that while Florida offers more protections and financial support to mobile home owners compared to Texas, Florida residents are not necessarily better off. Her work highlights the potential downsides to public policies that operate through the private sector, and the need to center the recipients of public services in policy-making and program design.

Show notes:

• Sullivan, E. (2017). Displaced in Place: Manufactured housing, mass eviction, and the paradox of state intervention. American Sociological Review, 82(2), 243-269.
• Sullivan, E. (2018). Manufactured Insecurity: Mobile home parks and Americans’ tenuous right to place. Univ of California Press.
• Schmitz Jr, J. A., Teixeira, A., & Wright, M. L. (2018). How HUD and NAHB Created the US Housing Crisis. Presentation to a Conference to Celebrate Edward C. Prescott.
• Pendall, R., Puentes, R., & Martin, J. (2006). From traditional to reformed: A review of the land use regulations in the nation’s 50 largest metropolitan areas. Brookings Institution.
• UCLA Housing Voice Podcast episode 43 on the origins of redlining with Todd Michney.

In 2016, Auckland, New Zealand did something nearly unprecedented in the English-speaking world: It upzoned the majority of land in the city, and not just for three or four units per parcel. They went much further than that, and by one estimate increased the legal capacity for housing in the city by 300%. The goal of the reform, known as the Auckland Unitary Plan, was to increase production of multifamily housing and slow or stop rapidly rising housing prices. Did they succeed? Ryan Greenaway-McGrevy has published several studies on the results approximately five years later, and the news is quite good. We talk through the details of what Auckland did and the impact it had, and the lessons it holds for other cities considering (or hoping for) similar reforms. Taking Auckland’s lead, New Zealand adopted even more aggressive housing reforms in 2021, and we discuss that too.

Show notes:

• Greenaway-McGrevy, R., Pacheco, G., & Sorensen, K. (2021). The effect of upzoning on house prices and redevelopment premiums in Auckland, New Zealand. Urban studies, 58(5), 959-976.
• Greenaway-McGrevy, R., & Phillips, P. C. (2022). The Impact of Upzoning on Housing Construction in Auckland. Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers, 2689.
• Map of post-upzoning residential zones in Auckland.
• Charts showing housing permit activity before and after upzoning in upzoned and non-upzoned areas: Figure 3 and Figure 5.
• Garcia, D., & Alameldin, M. (2023). California’s HOME Act Turns One: Data and Insights from the First Year of Senate Bill 9. UC Berkeley Terner Center for Housing Innovation.
• UCLA Housing Voice episode with Evan Mast on supply affects and demand/amenity affects associated with new construction.
• Phillips, S., Manville, M., & Lens, M. (2021). Research Roundup: The effect of market-rate development on neighborhood rents. UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies.
• Greenaway-McGrevy, R. (Jul 7 2016). Ryan Greenaway-McGrevy: Density the only win-win situation for Auckland. New Zealand Herald.
• UCLA Housing Voice episode with Dan Kuhlmann on impact on house and land prices when Minneapolis eliminated single-family zoning citywide.
• UCLA Housing Voice episode with Evan Mast on market-rate development and neighborhood rents.

HOPE VI was a federal program running from 1993–2010 that sought to redevelop distressed, poor, racially segregated public housing into mixed-income communities. In that time it helped build nearly 100,000 new homes for people of varying incomes, and with the involvement of both the public and private sectors. Its goal was to reduce concentrated poverty and racial segregation; so how did it do? Rebekah Levine Coley joins us to share her research into the impacts of HOPE VI redevelopment on neighborhood poverty, racial composition, and community resources. We also discuss the lessons from earlier generations of public housing and urban renewal that informed HOPE VI, and what the program can tell us about gentrification, displacement, the role of the private sector, and much more.

Show notes:

• Coley, R. L., Spielvogel, B., Hwang, D., Lown, J., & Teixeira, S. (2022). Did HOPE VI Move Communities to Opportunity? How Public Housing Redevelopment Affected Neighborhood Poverty, Racial Composition, and Resources 1990–2016. Housing Policy Debate, 1-32.
• Phillips, S. (2020). The Affordable City: Strategies for Putting Housing Within Reach (and Keeping it There). Island Press. (Use promo code PHILLIPS for 20% off.)
• Fulton, W. (2022). Place and Prosperity: How Cities Help Us to Connect and Innovate. Island Press.
• Wilson, W. J. (1987). The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy. University of Chicago Press.
• Crane, J. (1991). The epidemic theory of ghettos and neighborhood effects on dropping out and teenage childbearing. American journal of Sociology, 96(5), 1226-1259.
• Goetz, E. G. (2013). New Deal Ruins: Race, economic justice, and public housing policy. Cornell University Press.
• Goetz, E. G. (2013). The Audacity of HOPE VI: Discourse and the dismantling of public housing. Cities, 35, 342-348.
• A great source of additional background and data on the HOPE VI program: Gress, T., Cho, S., & Joseph, M. (2016). HOPE VI data compilation and analysis. National Initiative on Mixed-Income Communities, Case Western Reserve University.

In recent years, the story of residential segregation and discrimination — and especially the practice of redlining — has gained well-deserved prominence in U.S. housing discourse. Equally important, the federal government has been directly implicated in the development and institutionalization of redlining and similar practices. A key early player in this history is the Home Owners Loan Corporation, or HOLC, which commissioned the infamous “residential security” maps that separated residential neighborhoods into four categories, from green (best) to red (worst), based in no small part on racist assumptions about Black residents and homeowners — this is the origin of the word “redlining.” But while HOLC unquestionably has culpability in the racial disparities of the U.S. housing market, Todd Michney argues that the connection between HOLC and the institutionalization of redlining isn’t as direct or uncomplicated as is usually claimed. He shares the findings of historical research into the early days of HOLC’s housing market rescue efforts, and casts doubt on the commonly-told story about the origins of redlining.

Show notes:

• Michney, T. M., & Winling, L. (2020). New perspectives on new deal housing policy: Explicating and mapping HOLC loans to African Americans. Journal of Urban History, 46(1), 150-180.
• Winling, L. C., & Michney, T. M. (2021). The roots of redlining: academic, governmental, and professional networks in the making of the new deal lending regime. Journal of American History, 108(1), 42-69.
• Michney, T. M. (2021). How the City Survey’s Redlining Maps Were Made: A Closer Look at HOLC’s Mortgagee Rehabilitation Division. Journal of Planning History, 15385132211013361.
• Michney, T. M. (2017). Surrogate Suburbs: Black upward mobility and neighborhood change in Cleveland, 1900–1980. UNC Press Books.
• Surrogate Suburbs bus tour route!
• Jackson, K. T. (1987). Crabgrass Frontier: The suburbanization of the United States. Oxford University Press.
• Hillier, A. E. (2003). Who Received Loans? Home Owners’ Loan Corporation lending and discrimination in Philadelphia in the 1930s. Journal of Planning history, 2(1), 3-24.
• Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America.
• Glock, J. E. (2021). The Dead Pledge: The Origins of the Mortgage Market and Federal Bailouts, 1913–1939. Columbia University Press.

Social housing — housing built for limited or no profit, often with government support — came to account for huge portions of the housing market in many Western European countries following World War II, but its prominence has declined since the 1980s, when many governments began to shift their housing investments away from construction and toward direct financial support for renters. This shift is arguably one cause of the housing affordability crisis many cities find themselves in today, but in the face of opposing trends, two cities stand out for maintaining and even growing their social housing stock: Vienna and Helsinki. In this episode, Justin Kadi shares the history, policies, and politics that have contributed to the “remarkable stability” of these two cities’ social housing programs, and offers an incredible overview of how social housing is planned, financed, built, and operated in the places it’s been most successful.

Show notes:

• Kadi, J., & Lilius, J. (2022). The remarkable stability of social housing in Vienna and Helsinki: a multi-dimensional analysis. Housing Studies, 1-25.
• Eliason, M. (2021). Unlocking livable, resilient, decarbonized housing with Point Access Blocks. Larch Lab.
• Housing Voice ep. 32 with Diego Gil, on Chile’s shift toward a more neoliberal and demand-side housing policy framework.
• Housing Voice ep. 28 with Chua Beng Huat, on Singapore’s highly centralized public housing program.
• A brief history of “Red Vienna,” a product of the political victory of the Social Democratic Party in the early 1900s which led to tax reform and heavy public investment in housing.

Shared-equity homeownership programs help low- and moderate-income people afford buying a home, but they come with a catch. In exchange for help with your loan or a discount on your purchase, you need to pay back the government when you sell. That leaves them with less money to buy their next home, so many who participate in shared-equity programs end up stuck in place or back on the rental market. As William Cheung and Kelvin Wong put it, these programs provide great “entry affordability,” but participants struggle with “exit affordability” when they want to move out of subsidized housing and buy on the private market. We discuss their research into shared-equity ownership programs in six different countries, including the U.S., and how reforms might help more homebuyers or improve household mobility — but probably not both.

Show notes:

• Cheung, K. S., & Wong, S. K. (2019). Entry and exit affordability of shared equity homeownership: an international comparison. International Journal of Housing Markets and Analysis.
• Read here about the San Francisco Downpayment Assistance Loan Program (which is now discontinued).
• Cheung, K. S., Wong, S. K., Chau, K. W., & Yiu, C. Y. (2021). The Misallocation Problem of Subsidized Housing: A Lesson from Hong Kong. Sustainability, 13(4), 1855.

Andre Perry has spent years researching majority-Black communities, and he’s reached a stark conclusion: “There’s nothing wrong with Black people that ending racism can’t solve.” His 2020 book, Know Your Price: Valuing Black lives and property in America’s Black cities, explores this idea and its ramifications for Black uplift, and more specifically the valuation of Black property. Why are homes in Black-owned neighborhoods undervalued and underappraised? What role can — or should — homeownership play in closing America’s massive racial wealth gap? And how much can housing policy achieve when, as Dr. Perry puts it, “Property is not devalued; people are.” We discuss the book, the research that informed it, and his subsequent work identifying the keys to success for majority-Black cities and neighborhoods.

Show notes:

• Perry, A. M. (2020). Know Your Price: Valuing Black lives and property in America’s Black cities. Brookings Institution Press.
• The Negro Family: The Case for National Action (aka The Moynihan Report).
• Perry, A., Rothwell, J., & Harshbarger, D. (2018). The devaluation of assets in Black neighborhoods: the case of residential property. Brookings Institution.
• Read more about the Valuing Homes in Black Communities challenge.
  • …and the challenge winners.
• Hamilton, D., & Darity Jr, W. (2010). Can ‘baby bonds’ eliminate the racial wealth gap in putative post-racial America? The Review of Black Political Economy, 37(3-4), 207-216.
• The Black Progress Index.

Much has been written about the history of racial segregation in America’s housing market — and for good reason — but less is known about the role of class-based segregation. Using early 20th century Los Angeles as a case study, Laura Redford discusses how developers used a combination of restrictive covenants, the judicial system, and advertising to build a divided city — one that not only separated white residents from Black residents and other people of color, but also maintained divisions by class: poor with poor, middle class with middle class, and rich with rich. Several idiosyncrasies led to Los Angeles pioneering this model, with many of its practices soon exported to other cities and towns across the nation. And while racial discrimination in the U.S. has been illegal (but not eliminated) for more than 50 years, class-based discrimination lives on more explicitly in present-day housing policies, with implications for both economic opportunity and racial segregation.

Show notes:

• Redford, L. (2017). The intertwined history of class and race segregation in Los Angeles. Journal of Planning History, 16(4), 305-322.
• Weiss, M. A. (2002). The Rise of the Community Builders: The American real estate industry and urban land planning. Beard Books.
• Some background on the term “curbstoning” (by the Realtors’ trade group).
• Fennell, L. A. (2006). Exclusion's attraction: Land use controls in Tieboutian perspective. U Illinois Law & Economics Research Paper No. LE06-006, NYU, Law and Economics Research Paper, (06-12).
• Culver City “Racist Santa” real estate advertisement from 1913.
• Kwak, N. H. (2015). A World of Homeowners: American Power and the Politics of Housing Aid. University of Chicago Press.

Prior to 1980, per-capita income gaps between poor states and rich states were persistently shrinking, driven by the migration of lower-income, less skilled workers to higher-paying regions. Since then, this “regional income convergence” phenomenon has declined. What happened? As always, there’s a housing story to tell. Peter Ganong joins us to discuss his (and coauthor Daniel Shoag’s) research into the relationship between land use regulation, housing supply, household migration, and income. Their troubling finding: it no longer makes sense for many lower-income households to move to states with higher-paying jobs — after accounting for housing costs, some are actually worse off when they do so. This “skill sorting” of high-wage workers into expensive metro areas and low-wage workers into cheaper metros has worrying implications for accessing better opportunities, and much of it is driven by sharp restrictions on homebuilding in the highest-income states.

Show notes:

• Ganong, P., & Shoag, D. (2017). Why has regional income convergence in the US declined? Journal of Urban Economics, 102, 76-90.
• Hsieh, C. T., & Moretti, E. (2019). Housing constraints and spatial misallocation. American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, 11(2), 1-39.
• Jackson, K. (2016). Do land use regulations stifle residential development? Evidence from California cities. Journal of Urban Economics, 91, 45-56.
• Saiz, A. (2010). The geographic determinants of housing supply. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 125(3), 1253-1296.
• Bazelon and Yglesias blog post on Secret Congress.

In this episode we do a deep dive into the history of Atlanta’s public housing program, from its inception in 1934 to the eventual demolition and redevelopment of many sites in the 1990s and onward. But Professor Akira Drake Rodriguez’s focus isn’t the public housing developments themselves. Rather, it’s on the tenants — overwhelming Black, and disproportionately women-led — who called public housing communities home, organized and built political power within them, and used that power to make demands of the government. It’s a complex history without clear or consistent “good guys” and “bad guys,” and it complicates the narrative which argues that housing vouchers (or “Section 8”) are a complete substitute for the decline in public housing across the country. Whatever your connection to Atlanta or your knowledge of the US public housing program, there’s a lot to be learned from this case study on the politics of public housing in Atlanta.

Show notes:

• Rodriguez, A. D. (2021). Diverging Space for Deviants: The Politics of Atlanta's Public Housing. University of Georgia Press.
• Pritchett, W. E. (2010). Robert Clifton Weaver and the American City: The Life and Times of an Urban Reformer. University of Chicago Press.
• Parson, D. C. (2005). Making a Better World: Public Housing, the Red Scare, and the Direction of Modern Los Angeles. University of Minnesota Press.
• The Pruitt-Igoe Myth (documentary).
• Ingram, H., Schneider, A. L., & DeLeon, P. (2019). Social Construction and Policy Design. In Theories of the Policy Process (pp. 93-126). Routledge.
• W. E. B. Du Bois: A Study of the Atlanta University Federal Housing Area, 1934.
• Chaskin, R. J., & Joseph, M. L. (2015). Contested space: Design principles and regulatory regimes in mixed-income communities in Chicago. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 660(1), 136-154.
• 70 Acres in Chicago: Cabrini Green (documentary).

Usually, cities with lots of vacant housing have slow rent growth (or low rents), while lower vacancy rates are associated with higher rents. But many Indian cities have an unusual, seemingly paradoxical problem: high vacancy rates and high rents. Why? According to research by Dr. Sahil Gandhi and Professor Richard Green, a major contributor is insecure property rights — specifically, very strict rent control regulations and an inadequate supply of judges to rule in tenant eviction cases. We discuss how policies that increase risk and reduce profits — beyond a certain point, anyway — can lead some landlords to keep their units vacant rather than rent them out, with negative consequences for the entire housing market. We also explore the differences between “first generation” and “second generation” rent controls, and the reasons many cities across the world have shifted from the former to the latter.

Show notes:

• Gandhi, S., Green, R. K., & Patranabis, S. (2022). Insecure property rights and the housing market: Explaining India’s housing vacancy paradox. Journal of Urban Economics, 131, 103490.
• Tandel, V., Patel, S., Gandhi, S., Pethe, A., & Agarwal, K. (2016). Decline of rental housing in India: The case of Mumbai. Environment and Urbanization, 28(1), 259-274.
• Diamond, R., McQuade, T., & Qian, F. (2019). The effects of rent control expansion on tenants, landlords, and inequality: Evidence from San Francisco. American Economic Review, 109(9), 3365-94.
• Phillips, S. (2020). Does the Los Angeles region have too many vacant homes? UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies.
• Arnott, R. (1995). Time for revisionism on rent control? Journal of economic perspectives, 9(1), 99-120.
• Sims, D. P. (2007). Out of control: What can we learn from the end of Massachusetts rent control? Journal of Urban Economics, 61(1), 129-151.
• Another conversation on video between Sahil Gandhi and Paavo Monkkonen on rent control in India (click the tab “India: Rent Control” on the left).

How do we respond when regulations intended to help vulnerable tenants end up disadvantaging them even further? Professor Meredith Greif joins us to discuss her research and new book, Collateral Damages: Landlords and the Urban Housing Crisis, which explores how penalties levied against landlords can lead to stricter screening, harassment, and informal eviction of renters who may already struggle to find adequate housing. Far from proposing that we do away with tenant protections, Greif asks us to consider the trade-offs inherent in many policy decisions. Before we can come up with better solutions, we first need to grapple with these unintended (but often predictable) consequences — and recognize how our policies and regulations may be producing exactly the behaviors we say we want to discourage.

Show notes:

• Greif, M. (2018). Regulating landlords: Unintended consequences for poor tenants. City & Community, 17(3), 658-674.
• Greif, M. (2022). Collateral Damages: Landlords and the Urban Housing Crisis. Russell Sage Foundation.
• Background on the expansion of criminal nuisance laws and their disparate racial impacts in California: Dillon, L., Poston, B., & Barajas, J. (Nov 19 2020). Black and Latino renters face eviction, exclusion amid police crackdowns in California. Los Angeles Times.
• Mead, J., Hatch, M., Tighe, J. R., Pappas, M., Andrasik, K., & Bonham, E. (2017). Who is a nuisance? Criminal activity nuisance ordinances in Ohio. 
• Desmond, M. (2016). Evicted: Poverty and profit in the American city. Crown.
• Our earlier episode on landlords with Eva Rosen and Philip Garboden.

When eviction cases go to court, it’s typical for more than 90% of landlords to have legal representation, but less than 10% of tenants. This puts tenants at a considerable disadvantage, and helps to explain why few renters win their eviction cases; many don’t bother showing up for court hearings at all. Advocates argue that providing free legal representation to tenants — a policy known as “right to counsel” or “universal access to counsel” — would reduce evictions, but there have been few opportunities to study it in an experimental setting. Ingrid Gould Ellen of NYU joins us to talk about the impacts of the policy in New York City, the first U.S. city to adopt a right to counsel, starting with 10 ZIP codes in 2017 and expanding in subsequent years. We learn how the program has affected eviction filings, the share of tenants who receive legal representation, and the number of evictions executed by the court, and we discuss the wider context of housing instability and eviction — including the limitations and harder-to-measure benefits of a lawyer-based eviction reduction strategy.

Show notes:

• Ellen, I. G., O’Regan, K., House, S., & Brenner, R. (2021). Do lawyers matter? Early evidence on eviction patterns after the rollout of universal access to Counsel in New York City. Housing Policy Debate, 31(3-5), 540-561.
• The New York City Tenement Museum website.
• UCLA Housing Voice episode 29 on landlords, discrimination, and serial eviction filings with Eva Rosen and Philip Garboden.
• Abramson, B. (2021). The Welfare Effects of Eviction and Homelessness Policies. Job market paper.
• Cassidy, M. T., & Currie, J. (2022). The Effects of Legal Representation on Tenant Outcomes in Housing Court: Evidence from New York City's Universal Access Program (No. w29836). National Bureau of Economic Research.
• Collinson, R and Reed, D. (2018). The Effects of Evictions on Low-Income Households. 
• Hoffman, D. A., & Strezhnev, A. (2022). Longer Trips to Court Cause Evictions. U of Penn, Inst for Law & Econ Research Paper No. 22-29.
• Lens, M. C., Nelson, K., Gromis, A., & Kuai, Y. (2020). The neighborhood context of eviction in Southern California. City & Community, 19(4), 912-932.
• Nelson, K. R. (2022). Litigating the Housing Crisis: Legal Assistance and the Institutional Life of Eviction in Los Angeles. Doctoral dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles.
• Nelson, K., Gromis, A., Kuai, Y., & Lens, M. C. (2021). Spatial concentration and spillover: Eviction dynamics in neighborhoods of Los Angeles, California, 2005–2015. Housing Policy Debate, 31(3-5), 670-695.
• 2021 press release on NYC program expansion: New York City's First-in-Nation Right-to-Counsel Program Expanded Citywide Ahead of Schedule.

In recent years, many cities have turned to real estate transfer taxes to capture a share of price appreciation and generate revenues for public purposes. Transfer taxes are relatively popular with voters, and they are easy to collect, but they also have disadvantages compared to property taxes and land value taxes. (Shane has also endorsed higher, more progressive transfer taxes in Los Angeles.) Professor Tuukka Saarimaa joins us to discuss one such drawback from his research in Helsinki, Finland: by increasing the cost of moving, transfer taxes may reduce household mobility, making it less likely that people will live in the housing best suited to their needs. But while imposing taxes can discourage socially beneficial activities, spending them can also improve people’s lives, and we consider how this balance is met with housing transfer taxes in particular.

Show notes:

• Eerola, E., Harjunen, O., Lyytikäinen, T., & Saarimaa, T. (2021). Revisiting the effects of housing transfer taxes. Journal of Urban Economics, 124, 103367.
• Phillips, S. (2020). A Call For Real Estate Transfer Tax Reform. UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies.
• Martin-Straw, J. (2022 May 20). City Budget Sessions – Property Transfer Tax Debuts as 3rd Largest Income Source. Culver City Crossroads.
• Wagner, D. (2021 Dec 17). Ballot Initiative Aims To Fight LA Homelessness By Taxing Top-Dollar Property Deals. LAist. 
• Blanchflower, D. G., & Oswald, A. J. (2013). Does high home-ownership impair the labor market? (No. w19079). National Bureau of Economic Research.
• Freemark, Y. (2020). Upzoning Chicago: Impacts of a zoning reform on property values and housing construction. Urban Affairs Review, 56(3), 758-789.
• Saarimaa, T., & Tukiainen, J. (2014). I don't care to belong to any club that will have me as a member: empirical analysis of municipal mergers. Political Science Research and Methods, 2(1), 97-117.
• Bratu, C., Harjunen, O., & Saarimaa, T. (2021). City-wide effects of new housing supply: Evidence from moving chains. VATT Institute for Economic Research Working Papers, 146.

Starting in the 1970s, the Pinochet dictatorship overhauled its housing policies in an effort “to transform Chile from a nation of proletarios (proletarians) to one of propietarios (property owners).” To achieve that goal, and others, Chile adopted what the World Bank would later call an “enabling markets” policy — an approach that reduced the role of government in housing provision and delegated more authority to the private sector. These reforms had far-reaching consequences, not only within Chile but beyond its borders as other nations followed its lead. Diego Gil joins us to share the history of the enabling markets approach and its impacts, both positive and negative. On the one hand, the reforms led to an impressive expansion of the formal housing sector. On the other hand, homes for low-income households were often built in poorly located, inaccessible areas. We explore the difficult task of balancing government regulation and market efficiency, the need for policies that address housing supply and housing demand, and Gil’s proposed alternative to the enabling markets policy.

Show notes:

• Mc Cawley, D. G. (2019). Law and Inclusive urban development: lessons from Chile’s enabling markets housing policy regime. The American Journal of Comparative Law, 67(3), 587-636.
• Machuca (movie).
• World Bank report: Housing: Enabling Markets to Work, 1993.
• Turner, J.F.C. (1976). Housing by People: Towards Autonomy in Building Environments. 
• Abrams, C. (1966). Man's Struggle for Shelter in an Urbanizing World. MIT Press.
• Hernando De Soto: The Other Path: The Invisible Revolution in the Third World, 1989.
• Planet Money podcast episodes about the Chicago Boys: Part 1, Part 2.
• More on measuring housing needs/deficits in the U.S. context: Housing Voice episode 13 with Nick Marantz and Echo Zheng.
  • And episode 19 on slum upgrading in Bangkok, Thailand.
  • And episode 24 on suburbanization in Mexico.
  • And episode 31 on inclusionary zoning. 
• Kuai, Y. (2021). Flying Under the Radar: 4% Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Program (Doctoral dissertation, UCLA).
• Celhay, P. A., & Gil, D. (2020). The function and credibility of urban slums: Evidence on informal settlements and affordable housing in Chile. Cities, 99, 102605.

Cities have lived with exclusionary zoning for decades, if not generations. Is inclusionary zoning the answer? Inclusionary zoning, or IZ, requires developers to set aside a share of units in new buildings for low- or moderate-income households, seeking to increase the supply of affordable homes and integrate neighborhoods racially and socioeconomically. But how well does it accomplish these goals? This week we’re joined by the Mercatus Center’s Dr. Emily Hamilton to discuss her research on how IZ programs have impacted homebuilding and housing prices in the Washington, D.C. region, and the ironic reality that the success of inclusionary zoning relies on the continued existence of exclusionary zoning. Also, Shane and Mike rant about nexus studies.

Show notes:

• Hamilton, E. (2021). Inclusionary zoning and housing market outcomes. Cityscape, 23(1), 161-194.
• Manville, M., & Osman, T. (2017). Motivations for growth revolts: Discretion and pretext as sources of development conflict. City & Community, 16(1), 66-85.
• Bento, A., Lowe, S., Knaap, G. J., & Chakraborty, A. (2009). Housing market effects of inclusionary zoning. Cityscape, 7-26.
• Li, F., & Guo, Z. (2022). How Does an Expansion of Mandatory Inclusionary Housing Affect Housing Supply? Evidence From London (UK). Journal of the American Planning Association, 88(1), 83-96.
• Schleicher, D. (2012). City unplanning. Yale Law Journal, 7(122), 1670-1737.
• Phillips, S. (2022). Building Up the" Zoning Buffer": Using Broad Upzones to Increase Housing Capacity Without Increasing Land Values. UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies.
• Background on the inclusionary zoning program in Los Angeles (struck down in court, but later enabled by the state legislature).
• More on housing voucher policy in our interview with Rob Collinson.
• More on minimum lot size reform in our interview with M. Nolan Gray.
• A blog post questioning whether new market-rate housing actually “creates” demand for low-income housing.
• Los Angeles Affordable Housing Linkage Fee nexus study.

Skyscrapers! We can’t help but find them fascinating. Some cities are full of skyscrapers, and others have none. Developers built a 70-story tower on that parcel, but the proposed building just down the street is only 30 stories. How do developers decide where to build skyscrapers and how tall they should be? And are they really a profitable investment, or simply a monument to individual power and ego? Gabriel Ahlfeldt joins us from the London School of Economics to talk about his research on skyscrapers, a comprehensive analysis that catalogs nearly every 150-meter-plus building in the world. We discuss how skyscrapers influence the built form of cities, far beyond their typical boundaries within the central business district, and what the data can tell us about their profitability, their appeal to residents and workers, and the role that planners play in shaping where they’re found and how tall they go. Skyscrapers!

Show notes:

• Ahlfeldt, G. M., & Barr, J. (2022). The economics of skyscrapers: A synthesis. Journal of Urban Economics, 129, 103419.
• Ahlfeldt, G. M., Redding, S. J., Sturm, D. M., & Wolf, N. (2015). The economics of density: Evidence from the Berlin Wall. Econometrica, 83(6), 2127-2189.
• Cheshire, P. C., & Dericks, G. H. (2020). ‘Trophy Architects’ and Design as Rent‐seeking: Quantifying Deadweight Losses in a Tightly Regulated Office Market. Economica, 87(348), 1078-1104.
• Ahlfeldt, G. M., & McMillen, D. P. (2018). Tall buildings and land values: Height and construction cost elasticities in Chicago, 1870–2010. Review of Economics and Statistics, 100(5), 861-875.
• Barr, J. (2013). Skyscrapers and skylines: New York and Chicago, 1885–2007. Journal of Regional Science, 53(3), 369-391.

Landlords don’t have a great reputation. But despite the central role that landlords play in the housing market, there is surprisingly little research into how they operate. Eva Rosen and Philip Garboden interviewed more than 150 landlords in Baltimore, Dallas, Cleveland, and Washington, D.C. in an effort to better understand the motivations behind their actions — in their own words. On the one hand, they see real problems with the actions of landlords. This includes frequent use of eviction threats and filings, reframing the landlord-tenant relationship into one of creditor-debtor, and application processes that seek to proactively identify “good” tenants — and which often violate fair housing laws, intentionally or not. They also see stark differences between small “mom-and-pop” and larger, more “professionalized” landlords, though perhaps not in the ways one might expect. On the other hand, they observe a system of housing provision that asks more than landlords can necessarily offer, while society as a whole shirks its responsibilities to many of those who need housing assistance. Eva and Philip join us to share their findings and discuss possible solutions.

Show notes:

• Garboden, P. M., & Rosen, E. (2019). Serial filing: How landlords use the threat of eviction. City & Community, 18(2), 638-661.
• Rosen, E., Garboden, P. M., & Cossyleon, J. E. (2021). Racial discrimination in housing: how landlords use algorithms and home visits to screen tenants. American Sociological Review, 86(5), 787-822.
• Rosen, E., & Garboden, P. M. (2022). Landlord paternalism: Housing the poor with a velvet glove. Social Problems, 69(2), 470-491.
• Report on evictions in Washington D.C., including a flow chart of the eviction process on page 10. 
• The Voucher Promise: A Book Talk with Eva Rosen. Hosted by the UCLA Lewis Center.
• Leifheit, K. M., Linton, S. L., Raifman, J., Schwartz, G. L., Benfer, E. A., Zimmerman, F. J., & Pollack, C. E. (2021). Expiring eviction moratoriums and COVID-19 incidence and mortality. American journal of epidemiology, 190(12), 2503-2510.
• Manville, M., Monkkonen, P., Lens, M., & Green, R. (2020). COVID-19 and renter distress: evidence from Los Angeles. UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies.
• Nelson, K., Garboden, P., McCabe, B. J., & Rosen, E. (2021). Evictions: The comparative analysis problem. Housing Policy Debate, 31(3-5), 696-716.
• Lens, M.C., Nelson, K., Gromis, A., & Kuai, Y. (2020). The Neighborhood Context of Eviction in Southern California. City & Community, 19(4), 912-932.
• Garboden, P. M., & Newman, S. (2012). Is preserving small, low-end rental housing feasible? Housing Policy Debate, 22(4), 507–526.
• UCLA Housing Voice Episode 07: Residential Mobilization with Kristin Perkins.
• UCLA Housing Voice Episode 12: Transit-Induced Displacement with Elizabeth Delmelle.

“The government and its housing agency are thus constantly, indeed permanently, engaged in acts of balancing competing demands.” This is the situation that the Housing & Development Board, which builds public, owner-occupied housing for the vast majority of Singapore’s citizens and permanent residents, has created for itself. And they’ve been phenomenally successful at maintaining that balance: 85% of Singaporeans own a public housing unit — on a 99-year lease, not permanently — and prices for new homes have stayed relatively affordable for decades. What did it take to get there, where has Singapore’s leadership fallen short along the way, and what lessons can be exported to other nations? Professor Chua Beng Huat of the National University of Singapore and Yale-NUS College gives us a detailed history of the small island nation’s public housing program, and explains how a responsive government and a program of constant policy “patches” keeps it all running.

Show notes:

• Chua, B. H. (2014). Navigating between limits: the future of public housing in Singapore. Housing Studies, 29(4), 520-533.
• Wikipedia entry on Punggol, Singapore.
• Read more about the Housing & Development Board.
• Sin, C. H. (2002). The quest for a balanced ethnic mix: Singapore's ethnic quota policy examined. Urban Studies, 39(8), 1347-1374.
• Paavo’s interview with Yip Ngai-Ming on Hong Kong’s public housing.

“Find ways to give vocal minorities opt-out mechanisms where they can have some of the land use rules that they want, but they don’t get to drag the whole city down with them.” That’s one of Nolan Gray’s primary lessons from the success of minimum lot size reform in Houston, and a prescription for land use reform more generally. Houston’s reform, which took place in 1998, reduced the minimum parcel size for new homes from 5,000 to just 1,400 square feet per unit, and it’s produced tens of thousands of low-cost townhome-style houses in the city’s “inner loop.” It also allowed individual neighborhoods to opt-out of the reform, creating a political context in which reform could move forward. Gray, a doctoral student at UCLA and author of the new book, Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It, joins us to talk about the lessons we can learn from the famously unzoned city of Houston, and the promise that minimum lot size reform holds for improving affordability and giving residents more choice in how they live their lives.

Show notes:

• Gray, M. N., & Millsap, A. A. (2020). Subdividing the unzoned city: an analysis of the causes and effects of Houston’s 1998 subdivision reform. Journal of Planning Education and Research.
• Gray, M. N. (2022). Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It. Island Press.
• Gray, M. N., & Furth, S. (2019). Do minimum-lot-size regulations limit housing supply in Texas? Mercatus Research Paper.
• Glaeser, E. L., & Gyourko, J. (2002). The impact of zoning on housing affordability. National Bureau of Economic Research working paper.
• Monkkonen, P., & Manville, M. (2020). Planning knowledge and the regulatory hydra. Journal of the American Planning Association, 86(2), 268-269.
• Siegan, B. (2020). Land Use without Zoning. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
• On Minneapolis’s triplex zoning reform: Hamilton, E. (2022). Want More Housing? Ending Single-Family Zoning Won’t Do It. Bloomberg CityLab.
• On California’s ADU reform history: Casey, D. (2021). A Guide to Ending Single-Family Zoning: Lessons Learned from 39 Years of ADU Legislation. California Renters Legal Adovcacy and Education Fund.
• Hertz, D. (2015). The immaculate conception theory of your neighborhood’s origins. City Observatory.
• More about housing in Houston: Kinder Institute for Urban Research.
• UCLA Housing Voice Episode 10: Upzoning and Single-Family Housing Prices with Daniel Kuhlmann.

“We are at a point in Los Angeles and California, where we are seeing the population plateau or even decline for the first time since the 18th century. That is not only a statistical change it is a shift in how we define ourselves and our civic identity.” So says Christopher Hawthorne, one of many housing experts interviewed for a recently report published by the California 100 initiative. What are we going to do about it? In this final episode of season one, Shane is joined by Dana Cuff of UCLA cityLAB and Carolina Reid of UC Berkeley’s Terner Center to talk about their new report (co-authored with the Lewis Center). It outlines the facts that define California’s housing crisis, the history that got us here, and a vision for a more affordable, inclusive, socially and environmentally just future. The report calls for increased homebuilding and a greater emphasis on housing’s role in promoting the public good, not just private gain. Without both, California will fall short of its aspirations, and the rest of the U.S. may follow it down a path to worsening affordability, rising housing instability and homelessness, and declining economic and environmental sustainability.

Show notes:

• Report with Policies and Future Scenarios: Phillips, S., Reid, C., Cuff, D., & Wong, K. (2022). The Future of Housing and Community Development: A California 100 Report on Policies and Future Scenarios. California 100 Initiative.
• Full report on Facts, Origins, and Trends: Phillips, S., Reid, C., Cuff, D., & Wong, K. (2022). The Future of Housing and Community Development: An In-Depth Analysis of the Facts, Origins and Trends of Housing and Community Development in California. California 100 Initiative.
• Roadmap and Summary of report (four pages).
• Visual representation of the four scenarios, created by cityLAB.
• A Terner Center report on the likely impacts of Senate Bill (SB) 9.
• Baldassare, M., Bonner, D., Dykman, A., & Lopes, L. (2018). Proposition 13: 40 Years Later. Public Policy Institute of California.
• Update: Project Homekey expanded in 2022.
• See more of the Terner Center’s work.
• See more of cityLAB’s work.

Is housing a human right — or should it be? What obligations would that place on government, and on each of us, to ensure that everyone has access to adequate housing? Casey Dawkins addresses these and many other questions in his new book, Just Housing. Dr. Dawkins traces the history of land and housing reformers across American history, and how our conceptions of housing justice have shifted over time. We talk about what it would mean for every household to enjoy housing security, regardless of whether they rent or own, and Dawkins poses the provocative argument that private property is not the cause of housing injustice, but the solution to it. We also discuss Dawkins’ proposal for a “negative income tax” and universal housing allowance that could address many of the current injustices and inequities in the housing market.

Show notes:

• Dawkins, C. J. (2021). Just housing: The moral foundations of American housing policy. MIT Press.
• History of the right to shelter in New York.
• Waldron, J. (2019). Homelessness and the Issue of Freedom. J. Const. L., 27.
• Goetz, E. G. (2019). Fair Housing Is About Choice, Not Integration: 50 Years of the Fair Housing Act. University of Minnesota Center for Urban & Regional Affairs. 
• Goetz, E. G. (2020). The One-Way Street of Integration: Fair Housing and the Pursuit of Racial Justice in American Cities. Cornell University Press.

How do developers choose where to build? We need to know the answer to make good policy, and our policy choices may determine whether housing developments advance economic and racial integration, access to opportunity, and sustainability, or they exacerbate segregation, stagnation, and environmental destruction. Dr. Dinorah González of Universidad Iberoamericana joins us to discuss her research into this question in Tijuana, Mexico, where hundreds of thousands of homes were built for low-income households as a result of a nationwide quasi-public mortgage program, INFONAVIT. The program had immense consequences for where people lived and the jobs, schools, and amenities they had access to — and much to teach us about getting the most from the homes and communities we build. Listen in as we chat about the industrialization of housing construction, the role of government in housing provision, suburbanization across the North American content, and grappling with the trade-offs that always accompany large-scale public policies and programs.

Show notes:

• González-Ochoa, D. J. (2022). Policy-Induced Suburbanization: Mass-Produced Housing and Location Choices in Tijuana, Mexico. Housing Policy Debate, 1-18.
• Monkkonen, P. (2011). The housing transition in Mexico: Expanding access to housing finance. Urban Affairs Review, 47(5), 672-695.
• Grubbauer, M. (2020). Assisted Self‐help Housing in Mexico: Advocacy,(Micro) Finance and the Making of Markets. International journal of urban and regional research, 44(6), 947-966.
• YouTube video showing construction of concrete castings.
• Marosi, R. (Nov 26 2017). Mexico’s Housing Debacle. Los Angeles Times.
• Brian Potter’s blog, Construction Physics, on construction technology, innovation, and productivity.

How does the structure of political representation affect housing production, both in quantity and spatial distribution? And what does that mean for social and economic equity for traditionally disadvantaged and disenfranchised communities? Michael Hankinson joins us to discuss his research into how a shift from at-large to district-based elections has led to increased political representation but also declining housing production in affected cities. This “supply-equity trade-off,” as he calls it, has benefits as well as drawbacks, but the equity benefits may only be temporary if reduced supply leads to higher housing prices, which disproportionately hurt communities of color. As we discuss the implications of Hankinson’s work, we also consider complementary reforms that can preserve the representational benefits of district elections without the negative consequences of worsening housing scarcity.

Show notes:

• Hankinson, M., & Magazinnik, A. (2020). The supply-equity trade-off: The effect of spatial representation on the local housing supply. Working paper.
• For more background on California’s shift to district elections: Plummer, M. (2019, Jan 2). The Massive Election Change In California You've Likely Never Heard Of. LAist.
• Coverage of the Bell scandal at the LA Times.
• Hankinson, M. (2018). When do renters behave like homeowners? High rent, price anxiety, and NIMBYism. American Political Science Review, 112(3), 473-493.
• On the popularity of building more housing, and politicians who support it: Andersen, M. (2022, Feb 8). Housing is popular, actually. Sightline Institute.
• On Berkeley enrollment and the impacts of “negative power”: Klein, E. (2022, March 13). Government Is Flailing, in Part Because Liberals Hobbled It. New York Times.

Do people drive less because they live in buildings that don’t provide parking, or do they live in buildings that don’t provide parking because they drive less? That question has huge implications for how we build and rebuild our cities, yet researchers have struggled for decades to answer it conclusively. UCLA professor Adam Millard-Ball joins us to discuss new research that finally — we hope — puts the question to bed. Taking advantage of San Francisco’s affordable housing lottery, Millard-Ball and colleagues find that (as-good-as-)randomly assigning tenants to different buildings and neighborhoods has substantial impacts on their transportation choices, with lower parking ratios resulting in less driving and more transit use. We talk about what this means for housing and parking policy, and what it says about the behavioral shifts needed to make cities more affordable, accessible, and sustainable.

Show notes:

• Millard-Ball, A., West, J., Rezaei, N., & Desai, G. (2022). What do residential lotteries show us about transportation choices?. Urban Studies, 59(2), 434-452.
• Free summary of article at Transfers Magazine.
• Chatman, D. G. (2013). Does TOD need the T? On the importance of factors other than rail access. Journal of the American Planning Association, 79(1), 17-31.
• On parking cash-out programs: Shoup, Don. (2017). Opinion: Here’s an easy way to fight L.A.'s traffic and boost transit ridership — reward commuters who don’t drive. Los Angeles Times.
• Blumenberg, E., & Pierce, G. (2017). The drive to work: The relationship between transportation access, housing assistance, and employment among participants in the welfare to work voucher program. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 37(1), 66-82.
• King, D. A., Smart, M. J., & Manville, M. (2019). The poverty of the carless: Toward universal auto access. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 0739456X18823252.

“We have the resources, as a society, to prevent and end homelessness. And the knowledge,” according to Beth Shinn, professor at Vanderbilt University and co-author of In the Midst of Plenty: Homelessness and What To Do About It. So what would that look like? In this conversation, we discuss the Family Options Study, a randomized-controlled trial that evaluated different strategies for addressing family homelessness. The study compared long-term housing subsidies — primarily housing vouchers, which help households pay their rent — with rapid rehousing, transitional housing, and “usual care,” finding that vouchers led to much better outcomes at similar cost to the other options. We also get into what this research can tell us about reducing homelessness for other populations, such as veterans and people with severe mental illnesses. This is our first episode on homelessness in the U.S., and there will be more to come!

Show notes:

• Gubits, D., Shinn, M., Wood, M., Bell, S., Dastrup, S., Solari, C., Brown, S., McInnis, D., McCall, T., & Kattel, U. (2016). Family options study: 3-year impacts of housing and services interventions for homeless families. Available at SSRN 3055295.
• Shinn, M., & Khadduri, J. (2020). In the midst of plenty: Homelessness and what to do about it. John Wiley & Sons.
• To learn more about housing choice vouchers: UCLA Housing Voice Podcast, Episode 17: Housing Vouchers with Rob Collinson.
• Aubry, T., Nelson, G., & Tsemberis, S. (2015). Housing first for people with severe mental illness who are homeless: a review of the research and findings from the at home—chez soi demonstration project. The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 60(11), 467-474.
• Cunningham, M., Galvez, M., & Peiffer, E. (2018). Landlords limit voucher holders’ choice in where they can live. Urban Institute.
• Costs of homelessness in Santa Clara (not San Mateo) County: Flaming, D., Toros, H., & Burns, P. (2015). Home not found: The cost of homelessness in silicon valley. Economic Roundtable.
• National Alliance to End Homelessness. State of Homelessness: 2021 Edition.
• Learn more about research on the Moving to Opportunity experiment.

Social housing — homes reserved for lower- and middle-income households — has recently become something of a cause célèbre among left-leaning North American housing advocates. Given that, where better to look for guidance than in France? The SRU Law (Loi Solidarité et Renouvellement Urbain, or Solidarity and Urban Renewal) was adopted 20 years ago, requiring many French municipalities to increase their social housing stock to 20%, and later 25%, of all housing. The law has been successful, especially in Paris, but many urban areas continue to hold out, preferring to pay a fee to the national government rather than meet their social housing targets. We’re joined by Professor Magda Maaoui of the University of Cergy-Paris to discuss the law, the “outlaw municipalities” who flout it, and France’s inspiring progress in increasing housing production and reducing housing segregation and the concentration of poverty.

Show notes:

• Maaoui, M. (2021). The SRU Law, twenty years later: evaluating the legacy of France’s most important social housing program. Housing Studies, 1-23.
• Acolin, A. (2021). The public sector plays an important role in supporting French renters. Brookings Institution.
• Freemark, Y. (2019). Doubling housing production in the Paris region: A multi-policy, multi-jurisdictional response. International Journal of Housing Policy, 1-15.
• La Haine, 1995.
• Les Misérables, 2019.
• French government summary of SRU law (translatable into English).
• UCLA Housing Voice, episode 13 — discussion of state planning mandates in the U.S., including Massachusetts 40B.

The international tour continues! This week we interviewed Hayden Shelby, Assistant Professor at the University of Cincinnati, about her research into the Baan Mankong (“Secure Housing”) program in Bangkok, Thailand. Built on the principles of community organizing, finance, and ownership, Baan Mankong has been celebrated as a global model of participatory slum/settlement upgrading for developing countries. But for all its successes, the program is not without its drawbacks, raising difficult questions about the balance between empowerment of poor residents on one hand, and the shirking of state responsibilities on the other. The lessons being learned in Thailand also have implications for community land trusts, tenant opportunity to purchase, and related programs in the U.S. and beyond.

Show notes:

• Shelby, H. (2021). Empowerment or responsibility? Collective finance for slum upgrading in Thailand. International Journal of Housing Policy, 21(4), 505-533.
• Dowall, D. E. (1989). Bangkok: a profile of an efficiently performing housing market. Urban Studies, 26(3), 327-339.
• Dowall, D. E. (1992). A second look at the Bangkok land and housing market. Urban Studies, 29(1), 25-37.
• Elinoff, E. (2021). Citizen Designs: City-Making and Democracy in Northeastern Thailand. University of Hawaii Press.

Vacant houses are often pointed to as a symptom (or cause) of the housing crisis, but what do we really know about them? Where are they located; who lives in them; how many are there? In this conversation we explore foundational, data-driven research on the nature of vacancies in cities and neighborhoods across the U.S. with Professor Jake Wegmann of the University of Texas at Austin. We focus on “ghost dwellings” — houses that are vacant most of the year and primarily seasonal or recreational in use — and discuss their surprising distribution around the country and within cities, what may be driving their proliferation, and how policymakers and advocates should respond to them.

Show notes:

• Wegmann, J. (2020). Residences without residents: Assessing the geography of ghost dwellings in big US cities. Journal of Urban Affairs, 42(8), 1103-1124.
• Gutierrez, T. (2021). Gridlock and Cheese-Stuffed Gorditas on Austin’s Taco Mile. Eater Austin.
• Haramati, T., & Hananel, R. (2016). Is anybody home? The influence of ghost apartments on urban diversity in Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem. Cities, 56, 109-118.

Every year, more than two million low-income households receive rental assistance through the Housing Choice Voucher program, a federal program that helps renters afford housing on the private market. Currently, only about one-quarter of those eligible for vouchers receive them due to lack of program funding, though Democrats and the Biden administration have proposed expanding it. For our first episode of 2022, Rob Collinson of the University of Notre Dame joins us to talk about how we can get more bang for our buck from housing vouchers, the benefits and drawbacks of the program’s design, and how his research has already helped shape voucher policy reforms in metro areas across the U.S.

Show notes:

• Collinson, R., & Ganong, P. (2018). How do changes in housing voucher design affect rent and neighborhood quality?. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 10(2), 62-89.
• Bergman, P., Chetty, R., DeLuca, S., Hendren, N., Katz, L. F., & Palmer, C. (2019). Creating moves to opportunity: Experimental evidence on barriers to neighborhood choice (No. w26164). National Bureau of Economic Research.
• Rosen, E. (2020). The Voucher Promise. Princeton University Press.
• Collinson, R., Ellen, I. G., & Ludwig, J. (2019). Reforming housing assistance. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 686(1), 250-285.

For this episode, we take a trip to Tokyo to learn from the successes and shortcomings of Japanese housing policy. Known for high rates of production — Tokyo builds five times more housing than California, per capita — and relatively affordable housing, Japan also struggles with poor maintenance and rapid degradation of its buildings. Professor Jiro Yoshida of Pennsylvania State University and the University of Tokyo joins us to talk about the unique demographic, economic, and geographic conditions that led to Japan’s current housing context, and the underrecognized influence of depreciation and tax policy in the choices we make about where and how to live.

Show notes:

• Yoshida, J. (2021). Land scarcity, high construction volume, and distinctive leases characterize Japan’s rental housing markets. Brookings Institution.
• Yoshida, J. (2020). The economic depreciation of real estate: Cross-sectional variations and their return implications. Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, 61, 101290.
• Gleeson, J. (2018). How Tokyo built its way to abundant housing. James Gleeson Blog.

In the 1930s, in the midst of the Great Depression, the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) was created to protect households from foreclosure and in some cases repurchase homes they’d already lost. As a part of its efforts, HOLC created “residential security maps” to categorize neighborhoods by lending risk, with low-risk neighborhoods shaded in green and blue, and high-risk neighborhoods colored in yellow and red. These infamous maps are where we get the familiar term, “redlining,” and they helped institutionalize America’s racialized housing market. Jacob Faber, Associate Professor at New York University's Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service, joins us to discuss his fascinating new research into HOLC’s influence on racial segregation in the cities where it operated, and the persistence of its effects nearly 100 years after the agency was created.

Show notes:

• Faber, J. W. (2020). We built this: Consequences of new deal era intervention in America’s racial geography. American Sociological Review, 85(5), 739-775.
• Glotzer, P. (2020). How the suburbs were segregated: Developers and the business of exclusionary housing, 1890–1960. Columbia University Press.
• Redford, L. (2014). The Promise and Principles of Real Estate Development in an American Metropolis: Los Angeles 1903-1923. University of California, Los Angeles.
• Hoffman, J. S., Shandas, V., & Pendleton, N. (2020). The effects of historical housing policies on resident exposure to intra-urban heat: a study of 108 US urban areas. Climate, 8(1), 12.
• Slate, G. (2021). Freedom to Discriminate: How Realtors Conspired to Segregate Housing and Divide America. Heyday.
• Connolly, N. D. (2014). A world more concrete: real estate and the remaking of Jim Crow South Florida. University of Chicago Press.
• Hillier, A. E. (2003). Who received loans? Home Owners’ Loan Corporation lending and discrimination in Philadelphia in the 1930s. Journal of Planning history, 2(1), 3-24.
• Fishback, P. V., Rose, J., Snowden, K. A., & Storrs, T. (2021). New Evidence on Redlining by Federal Housing Programs in the 1930s (No. w29244). National Bureau of Economic Research.
• Aaronson, D., Faber, J., Hartley, D., Mazumder, B., & Sharkey, P. (2021). The long-run effects of the 1930s HOLC “redlining” maps on place-based measures of economic opportunity and socioeconomic success. Regional Science and Urban Economics, 86, 103622.
• Rothstein, R. (2017). The color of law: A forgotten history of how our government segregated America. Liveright Publishing.

In most of the U.S., cities are for singles, roommates, and childless couples, and the suburbs are for raising kids. That’s not true of much of the rest of the world, and perhaps the nearest example of family-friendly urbanism can be found just a few miles to the north, in Vancouver, British Columbia. Vancouver’s under-15 population fell by one percent citywide between 1996 and 2016, but in downtown specifically, its youth population nearly tripled. Louis Thomas, lecturer at Georgetown University and a parent himself, joins us this week to discuss the history, policies, and social infrastructure that have enabled this incredible shift, and how those lessons might translate to other cities and urban cores across North America.

Show notes:

• Thomas, L. L. (2021). Committed and “Won Over” Parents in Vancouver’s Dense Family-Oriented Urbanism. Journal of the American Planning Association, 87(2), 239-253.
• Karsten, L. (2015). Middle-class childhood and parenting culture in high-rise Hong Kong: On scheduled lives, the school trap and a new urban idyll. Children's Geographies, 13(5), 556-570.
• Karsten, L. (2015). Middle-class households with children on vertical family living in Hong Kong. Habitat International, 47, 241-247.
• Yuen, B., Yeh, A., Appold, S. J., Earl, G., Ting, J., & Kurnianingrum Kwee, L. (2006). High-rise living in Singapore public housing. Urban Studies, 43(3), 583-600.
• Thomas, L. L. (2020). From childless tower to child-full density: families and the evolution of vancouverism. Planning Perspectives, 1-23.
• Ley, D. (1980). Liberal ideology and the postindustrial city. Annals of the Association of American geographers, 70(2), 238-258.
• City of Vancouver Planning Department. (1978). Housing Families at High Densities.
• Fishman, R. (2008). Bourgeois utopias: The rise and fall of suburbia. Basic books.

Cities across the country have dropped the ball when it comes to planning for and building housing at all income levels — especially housing affordable to low-income residents. In response, many states have intervened. The form these interventions take varies from place to place, however, with Northeastern states relying on legal appeals by developers to deliver low-income homes, and Western states mandating local planning processes to achieve similar ends. How is that going? Professor Nicholas Marantz and Dr. Huixin Zheng join us this week to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of these different approaches, and reforms that could make them work better.

Show notes:

• Marantz, N. J., & Zheng, H. (2020). State affordable housing appeals systems and access to opportunity: Evidence from the northeastern United States. Housing Policy Debate, 30(3), 370-395.
• Marantz, N. J., & Zheng, H. (2018). Exclusionary zoning and the limits of judicial impact. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 0739456X18814924.
• Zheng, H., Marantz, N. J., Kim, J. H., & Houston, D. (2021). Accessibility, Affordability, and the Allocation of Housing Targets to California’s Local Governments.
• Li, L. H., Lin, J., Li, X., & Wu, F. (2014). Redevelopment of urban village in China–A step towards an effective urban policy? A case study of Liede village in Guangzhou. Habitat International, 43, 299-308.
• Guo, Y., Zhang, C., Wang, Y. P., & Li, X. (2018). (De-) Activating the growth machine for redevelopment: The case of Liede urban village in Guangzhou. Urban Studies, 55(7), 1420-1438.
• Kapur, S., Damerdji, S., Elmendorf, C. S., & Monkkonen, P. (2021). What Gets Built on Sites That Cities “Make Available” For Housing? Evidence and Implications for California’s Housing Element Law. UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies.
• Freemark, Y. (2021). Lessons from France for Creating Inclusionary Housing by Mandating Citywide Affordability. Urban Institute.

When major public investments are proposed in lower- and middle-income neighborhoods, it’s common to hear concerns about gentrification and displacement: Will the new rail line, park, or bike lane benefit the people who currently call the neighborhood home, or will it only lead to the displacement of existing residents and their replacement by higher-income households? Our guest this week is Professor Elizabeth Delmelle of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, who joins to discuss her recent work investigating the connection between evictions and the opening of rail stations in gentrifying neighborhoods. We talk about her findings and the persistent — but perhaps mistaken — belief that displacement rates increase when neighborhoods receive new amenities.

Show notes:

• Delmelle, E. C., Nilsson, I., & Bryant, A. (2021). Investigating Transit-Induced Displacement Using Eviction Data. Housing Policy Debate, 31(2), 326-341.
• Johnson, David S., Freedman, Vicki A., Sastry, Narayan, McGonagle, Katherine A., Brown, Charles, Fomby, Paula, … Stafford, Frank P. Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID): Main Interview, 1968-2015. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
• Lens, M. C., Nelson, K., Gromis, A., & Kuai, Y. (2020). The neighborhood context of eviction in Southern California. City & Community, 19(4), 912-932.
• Pennington, K. (2021). Does Building New Housing Cause Displacement?: The Supply and Demand Effects of Construction in San Francisco. The Supply and Demand Effects of Construction in San Francisco (June 15, 2021).

We know that the COVID-19 pandemic has been tough on many renters, with job and income losses piled on top of mental stress and the physical threat of deadly infection. Then add housing insecurity to the mix. The UCLA Lewis Center’s Mike Manville and Paavo Monkkonen join us as guests to talk about two recent surveys of LA County renters: How have they weathered the pandemic, and what do their answers tell us about the local and national policy response to the threat of widespread eviction?

Show notes:

• Manville, M., Monkkonen, P., Lens, M., & Green, R. (2020). COVID-19 and Renter Distress: Evidence from Los Angeles. UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies and USC Lusk Center for Real Estate.
• Manville, M., Monkkonen, P., Lens, M., & Green, R. (2021). End of the pandemic, but not renter distress. UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies and USC Lusk Center for Real Estate.
• Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney.
• “The Academic Debate re: Zoning Reform in High-Cost Regions” in Phoenix Wright courtroom format.
• Desmond, M. (2016). Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. Penguin Random House.
• Rent Debt Dashboard, National Equity Atlas.
• Reed, D., & Divringi, E. (2021). Household Rental Debt During COVID-19: Update for August 2021. Philadelphia Fed.
• DuMonthier, A. (April 9 2021). Ameliorating the Post-COVID-19 Rental Debt Burden on California Renters. Berkeley Public Policy Journal.
• Gonzalez, S. R. Ong, P. M., Pierce, G., & Hernandez, A. (2021). Keeping the Lights and Water On: COVID-19 and Utility Debt in Los Angeles’ Communities of Color. UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation and UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge.

Many cities — and the entire state of California — are considering ending single-family zoning, or apartment bans, to improve housing affordability and address historic injustices in housing and land use. Opponents of these reforms argue that “upzoning” for higher-density housing will do the opposite, raising housing prices and harming lower-income communities and communities of color. Dr. Daniel Kuhlmann of Iowa State University ran the numbers for the first major city in America to end single-family zoning, Minneapolis. The prices of some single-family homes do indeed go up, but as Professor Kuhlmann argues, the price of some parcels must rise in order to encourage redevelopment and produce more affordable housing options for the city as a whole. 

Show notes:

• Kuhlmann, D. (2020). Upzoning and Single-Family Housing Prices: A (Very) Early Analysis of the Minneapolis 2040 Plan. Journal of the American Planning Association, 1-13.
• Manville, M., Monkkonen, P., & Lens, M. (2020). It’s time to end single-family zoning. Journal of the American Planning Association, 86(1), 106-112.
• 99% Invisible, “Stuccoed in Time.” February 2, 2021.
• Einstein, K. L., Palmer, M., & Glick, D. M. (2019). Who participates in local government? Evidence from meeting minutes. Perspectives on politics, 17(1), 28-46.
• Einstein, K. L., Glick, D. M., & Palmer, M. (2019). Neighborhood Defenders: Participatory Politics and America's Housing Crisis. Cambridge University Press.
• Freemark, Y. (2020). Upzoning Chicago: Impacts of a zoning reform on property values and housing construction. Urban Affairs Review, 56(3), 758-789.
• Andersen, M. (Jun 21 2019). This is what a street looks like 39 years after legalizing fourplexes. Sightline Institute.
• Andersen, M. (Aug 1 2021). We ran the rent numbers on Portland’s 7 newly legal home options. Sightline Institute.

Institutions like the U.S. Census Bureau offer us a wealth of statistics about the places people live: household incomes; demographics like race, ethnicity, age, and gender; how many people own or rent their homes, how much they pay, and where they moved from. We know much less about how people perceive their neighborhoods — how they feel about the places they live, regardless of their objective conditions, and how that affects their ability or willingness to stay. What do we miss when we overlook these subjective feelings and impressions? Dr. Prentiss Dantzler of the University of Toronto joins us to discuss his work on this subject, and to share some of the surprising ways that neighborhood perceptions relate to residential mobility.

Show notes:

• Jones, A., & Dantzler, P. (2021). Neighbourhood perceptions and residential mobility. Urban Studies, 58(9), 1792-1810.
• Ciorici, P., & Dantzler, P. (2019). Neighborhood satisfaction: A study of a low-income urban community. Urban affairs review, 55(6), 1702-1730.
• Leventhal, T., & Brooks-Gunn, J. (2003). Moving to opportunity: an experimental study of neighborhood effects on mental health. American journal of public health, 93(9), 1576-1582.
• Sampson, R. J. (2017). Collective efficacy theory: Lessons learned and directions for future inquiry. In Taking stock (pp. 149-167). Routledge.
• DeLuca, S., & Rosenblatt, P. (2017). Walking away from The Wire: Housing mobility and neighborhood opportunity in Baltimore. Housing policy debate, 27(4), 519-546.
• DeLuca, S., Wood, H., & Rosenblatt, P. (2019). Why poor families move (and where they go): Reactive mobility and residential decisions. City & Community, 18(2), 556-593.
• Korver-Glenn, E., Dantzler, P., & Howell, J. (2021). A critical intervention for urban sociology.
• Rodriguez, A. D. (2021). Diverging Space for Deviants: The Politics of Atlanta's Public Housing. University of Georgia Press.
• Sharkey, P., & Faber, J. W. (2014). Where, when, why, and for whom do residential contexts matter? Moving away from the dichotomous understanding of neighborhood effects. Annual review of sociology, 40, 559-579.

Many local governments seek to extract public benefits, such as open space and low-income housing units, from new development. These benefits are often negotiated during the project approval process, or they may be tied to local zoning changes that allow for taller or denser development. How best should cities go about this process of “value capture”? Should they do it at all? Dr. Minjee Kim of Florida State University joins us to talk about Seattle and Boston’s very different approaches to value capture and “public benefit exactions,” and what lessons they hold for planners and advocates in other cities.

Show notes:

• Kim, M. (2020). Negotiation or schedule-based? Examining the strengths and weaknesses of the public benefit exaction strategies of Boston and Seattle. Journal of the American Planning Association, 86(2), 208-221.
• Kim, M. (2020). Upzoning and value capture: How US local governments use land use regulation power to create and capture value from real estate developments. Land Use Policy, 95, 104624.
• Manville, M. (2021). Value Capture Reconsidered: What if L.A. was Actually Building Too Little? UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies.
• Nasar, J. L., & Grannis, P. (1999). Design review reviewed: Administrative versus discretionary methods. Journal of the American Planning Association, 65(4), 424-433.
• Explainer: Residual land value, how it can be changed by rezoning, and the rationale for tying value capture to zoning changes. (See especially the first 3 pages.)

Past research has shown that moving to a better neighborhood can improve life outcomes for children and adults, at least under certain conditions. However, these studies do not examine how impacts differ by race and ethnicity, and they tend to focus only on a narrow slice of the population, such as public housing residents. How does moving impact different households in the real world, outside of an experimental setting? We welcome Kristin Perkins of Georgetown University to the podcast to talk about her work, and the difficult (but perhaps unsurprising) finding that moving is more harmful to the wellbeing of Black and Latino children than white children.

Show notes:

• Perkins, K. L. (2017). Reconsidering residential mobility: Differential effects on child wellbeing by race and ethnicity. Social science research, 63, 124-137.
• Chetty, R., Hendren, N., & Katz, L. F. (2016). The effects of exposure to better neighborhoods on children: New evidence from the Moving to Opportunity experiment. American Economic Review, 106(4), 855-902.
• Menendian, S., Gailes, A., & Gambhir, S. (2021). The Roots of Structural Racism: Twenty-First Century Racial Residential Segregation in the United States. Othering and Belonging Institute, UC Berkeley.
• Perkins, K. L. (2007). Roosevelt and Rexford: Resettlement and its Results. Berkeley Planning Journal, 20(1).
• Perkins, K. L. (2017). Household instability during childhood and young adult outcomes (Doctoral dissertation).
• Perkins, K. L. (2017). Household complexity and change among children in the United States, 1984 to 2010. Sociological Science, 4, 701-724.

In the not-too-distant past, most multifamily rental housing was owned by small or midsize landlords. But over the past few decades the share of units owned by large, well-capitalized, shareholder-driven institutions has increased dramatically. What’s driving this change, and what does it mean for housing affordability and household stability? Martine August of the University of Waterloo joins us to talk about the “financialization” of rental housing in Canada, which is on a similar trajectory to many U.S. housing markets.

Show notes: 

• August, M. (2020). The financialization of Canadian multi-family rental housing: From trailer to tower. Journal of Urban Affairs, 42(7), 975-997.
• “Housing, Equity and Community Series: Making Rental Housing ‘Home’,” Nov. 20 Lewis Center event with Michael Lens, joined by Chancela Al-Mansour, executive director of Housing Rights Center, and Robert Galardi, chief inspector with the LA Housing + Community Investment Department. https://youtu.be/cEBXQzXQ5wg

We’ve known for many years that building more homes helps keep prices in check at the regional or metro area level, but what about the house down the street? When a new apartment building goes up nearby, does the “supply effect” of more homes lower rents, or does the “demand effect” send a signal to nearby property owners and potential residents that causes rents to go up? Evan Mast of the Upjohn Institute joins Mike and Shane to discuss two recent papers he’s worked on that help shed light on this important and controversial question.

Show notes:

• Asquith, B., Mast, E., & Reed, D. (2019). Supply shock versus demand shock: The local effects of new housing in low-income areas. Upjohn Institute WP, 19-316.
• Mast, E. (2019). The effect of new market-rate housing construction on the low-income housing market. Upjohn Institute WP, 19-307.
• Li, X. (2019). Do new housing units in your backyard raise your rents. Working paper.
• Guerrieri, V., Hartley, D., & Hurst, E. (2013). Endogenous gentrification and housing price dynamics. Journal of Public Economics, 100, 45-60.
• Phillips, S., Manville, M., & Lens, M. (2021). Research Roundup: The Effect of Market-Rate Development on Neighborhood Rents. UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies.
• Diamond, R., McQuade, T., & Qian, F. (2019). The effects of rent control expansion on tenants, landlords, and inequality: Evidence from San Francisco. American Economic Review, 109(9), 3365-94.
• Liu, L., McManus, D. A., & Yannopoulos, E. (2020). Geographic and Temporal Variation in Housing Filtering Rates. Available at SSRN.
• “Opportunities and Obstacles for Rental Housing Registries,” Jan. 20 Lewis Center event with Assembly member Buffy Wicks and Catherine Bracy. https://youtu.be/vaDTWHxk-I8 

The federal government passed the Fair Housing Act more than 50 years ago. In that time considerable progress has been made at reducing discrimination in the housing market, but the law’s mandate to “affirmatively further fair housing” and reverse patterns of segregation has been only lightly enforced. Katherine O’Regan of NYU, and formerly of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, joins Mike and Shane to talk about the legacy of the Fair Housing Act, the changing nature of neighborhood segregation and opportunity in America, and recent efforts to proactively foster inclusive communities using fair housing laws.

Show notes:

• O’Regan, K. (2018). The Fair Housing Act Today: Current Context and Challenges at 50. Housing Policy Debate.
• O’Regan, K., & Zimmerman, K. (2019). The Potential of the Fair Housing Act's Affirmative Mandate and HUD's AFFH Rule. Cityscape, 21(1), 87-98.
• Kerner Commission Report, including a summary by UC Berkeley's Othering and Belonging Institute.

As a general rule, more parking means more vehicle ownership and more driving in cities. However, how people pay for that parking (or if they pay at all) also affects travel behavior: when parking is included in the price of housing — when it is “bundled” — people also drive more and use transit less than when the price of parking is “unbundled” from housing costs, even when households own cars in both situations. Planners have long known that reducing parking makes housing more affordable, transit more appealing, and cities more environmentally sustainable and walkable, but what do the different impacts of bundled and unbundled parking have on cities, and how should planners and advocates think about it? Michael Manville of UCLA joins Shane and Mike to talk about parking requirements, travel behavior, and the many ways we all end up paying for a place to store our cars.

Show notes:

• Manville, M., & Pinski, M. (2020). Parking behaviour: Bundled parking and travel behavior in American cities. Land Use Policy.
• Manville, M. (2017). Bundled parking and vehicle ownership: Evidence from the American Housing Survey. Journal of Transport and Land Use.
• Manville, M. (2018). Transition costs and transportation reform: The case of SFpark. Research in Transportation Business & Management.
• Manville, M., (2020). Roads, Prices, and Shortages: A Gasoline Parable.

Most of us are familiar with how subprime loans were disproportionately (and predatorily) targeted at Black and Latino households during the 2000s housing bubble leading up to the Great Recession. Less well known is that disparate treatment in mortgage lending is making a comeback alongside the recovery of the housing market. José Loya of UCLA joins Shane and Mike to talk about ethnic and racial disparities in access to mortgage credit in the years following the housing crash.

Show notes:

• Loya, J., & Flippen, C. (2020). The Great Recession and Ethno-Racial Disparities in Access to Mortgage Credit. Social Problems.
• Noble, Safiya Umoja. (2018). Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. NYU Press. 
• Phillips, Shane. (February 2, 2021). A “Rental Pension” Program to Compete with Homeownership. Better Institutions.
• Phillips, Shane. (March 11, 2021). Renting is Terrible. Owning is Worse. The Atlantic.

Which arguments against new housing are most effective? Residents were asked how they felt about a hypothetical housing development proposed nearby, then told about the concerns of some of their neighbors: traffic congestion, neighborhood character, strained services, or developer profit. Surprisingly, the developer profit argument was the most effective at reducing support for new housing, although opposition declined when residents were informed that the developers also provided community benefits with their projects. Paavo Monkkonen of UCLA joins us to discuss these and other findings from his research.

Show notes: 

• Monkkonen, P., & Manville, M. (2019). Opposition to development or opposition to developers? Experimental evidence on attitudes toward new housing. Journal of Urban Affairs, 41(8), 1123-1141.
• Hankinson, M. (2018). When do renters behave like homeowners? High rent, price anxiety, and NIMBYism. American Political Science Review, 112(3), 473-493.
• Piecing it Together: A Framing Playbook for Affordable Housing Advocates. Enterprise Community Partners.
• Whittemore, A. H., & BenDor, T. K. (2019). Exploring the acceptability of densification: How positive framing and source credibility can change attitudes. Urban Affairs Review, 55(5), 1339-1369.
• Paavo’s CV!