UCLA Housing Voice: Recent Episodes
UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies
Why does the housing market seem so broken? And what can we do about it? UCLA Housing Voice tackles these questions in conversation with leading housing researchers, with each episode centered on a study and its implications for creating more affordable and accessible communities.
This episode features clips from a few episodes of Michael Andersen's one-shot podcast series, YIMBY Country: "A podcast mini-series about what happens after you legalize housing. In this case, in New Zealand."
Read about the Lewis Center's work at lewis.ucla.edu.
Follow our Substack at uclahousingvoice.substack.com.
Email Shane at at shanephillips@ucla.edu and follow him on Bluesky and LinkedIn.
Show notes:
- Listen to YIMBY Country on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
- Episode 45 of UCLA Housing Voice: What Happened When Auckland Upzoned Everywhere with Ryan Greenaway-McGrevy.
- Episode 81 of UCLA Housing Voice: How New Zealand Passed Its Ambitious Zoning Reforms with Eleanor West.
- Part 1 of the New Zealand Initiative's three-part series.
When cities adopt exclusionary zoning, their housing stock becomes scarcer and less affordable over time. Matt Mleczko shares research suggesting that the impacts extend beyond exclusionary jurisdictions’ borders, hurting poor communities that have no say over their neighbors’ land use policies.
Read about the Lewis Center's work at lewis.ucla.edu.
Follow our Substack at uclahousingvoice.substack.com.
Email Shane at at shanephillips@ucla.edu and follow him on Bluesky and LinkedIn.
Show notes:
- Mleczko, M. (2026). The Cumulative Exposure to Exclusionary Zoning in Impoverished Neighborhoods. Demography, 63(1), 213-239.
- The National Zoning and Land Use Database.
- Jones, P. (2010). The Selma of the North: Civil Rights Insurgency in Milwaukee. Harvard University Press.
- Wikipedia page on ‘Sewer Socialism,’ a movement that started in Milwaukee.
- Perry, E. M. (2017). Live and Let Live: Diversity, Conflict, and Community in an Integrated Neighborhood. University of North Carolina Press.
- Fischel, W. A. (2015). Zoning Rules! The Economics of Land Use Regulation. Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
- Goetz, E. G., Damiano, A., & Williams, R. A. (2019). Racially concentrated areas of affluence. Cityscape, 21(1), 99-124.
- Taylor, K. (2019). Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership. University of North Carolina Press.
- Connolly, B., & Kazis, N. (2026). Rezoning the Rust Belt [working paper]. SSRN.
Supply skeptics don’t believe that building more homes improves affordability. Vicki Been tells us what the latest research says about their main arguments.
Read about the Lewis Center's work at lewis.ucla.edu.
Follow our Substack at uclahousingvoice.substack.com.
Email Shane at at shanephillips@ucla.edu and follow him on Bluesky and LinkedIn.
Show notes:
- Been, V., Ellen, I. G., & O’Regan, K. (2025). Supply skepticism revisited. Housing Policy Debate, 35(1), 96-113.
- Been, V., Ellen, I. G., & O’Regan, K. (2019). Supply skepticism: Housing supply and affordability. Housing Policy Debate, 29(1), 25-40.
- Fang, L., Kim, E., & Tyndall, J. (2025). The downmarket impact of new multifamily housing: Evidence from a Honolulu condo tower. Real Estate Economics.
- Grabar, H. (2026). High-End Construction Really Does Help Everyone. The Atlantic.
- Shane’s Substack post on the share of households living in recently-built housing who come from the same/different metro area or from within 50 or 100 miles of their new home.
- Pew Charitable Trusts Youtube video: “Building More Housing Creates 'Moving Chains' of Affordability”.
- Rollet, V. (2025). Can We Rebuild a City? The Dynamics of Urban Redevelopment [working paper].
- Giacoletti, M., Korevaar, M., & Qian, F. (2025). How Housing Supply Expansions Reshape Cities [working paper].
- Furman Center Land Use Reform Tracker.
- Soltas, E., & Gruber, J. (2026). How Costly Is Permitting in Housing Development? [working paper].
Transit agencies are using microtransit services to increase the reach and access of their overall service. We talk with Mike Hyland about how agencies can think about pricing and fleet sizing to balance cost and service. Also, how should agencies measure the overall success of their microtransit services?
Show notes:
- Hyland, M., Saha, R., & Hu, S. (2026). Peak Pricing and Transfer Discounts Can Make Microtransit More Efficient. UC Office of the President: University of California Institute of Transportation Studies. http://dx.doi.org/10.7922/G2HT2MPD
- Saha, Ritun and Hu, Siwei and Hyland, Michael, Optimal Fare Policy and Fleet Sizing for an Integrated Fixed-Route Transit and Microtransit System (August 02, 2025). Available at SSRN: http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5382012
- Hyland, M., Watkins, K., Shaheen, S., & Martin, E. (2026). What Should Agencies Measure to Decide If Microtransit Is Working? UC Office of the President: University of California Institute of Transportation Studies. http://dx.doi.org/10.7922/G2ZW1JBF
- Hyland, M. F; Pike, S.; Hu, S.; Berkel, J.; Xing, Y.; Saha, R., et al. (2024). Integrating Microtransit Service with Traditional Fixed-Route Transit Costs More but Greatly Improves Access to Jobs. UC Office of the President: University of California Institute of Transportation Studies. http://dx.doi.org/10.7922/G2TH8K2W
- Slosky, J., Silver, F., Schuchard, J., Schuchard, R., and Welsh, D. (2022) Microtransit definitions, trends, and applications. Calstart https://calstart.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/CALSTART-Microtransit-Overview.pdf
- Miriam Pinski, Anne Brown, Nicholas Perloff-Giles (2026). Is microtransit a cost-effective alternative or a costly competitor to public transit?, Cities,Volume 169, 2026, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2025.106490.
Does building housing near rail stations reduce driving, even if it prices out lower-income residents? Dan Chatman's research suggests the answer hinges not on who lives there, but on how much housing gets built.
- Chatman, D. G., Xu, R., Park, J., & Spevack, A. (2019). Does Transit-Oriented Gentrification Increase Driving? Journal of Planning Education and Research, 39(4), 482-495. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0739456X19872255
- Chatman, Dan (2015) Does Transit-Oriented Development Need the Transit? Access Magazine. https://accessmagazine.org/fall-2015/does-transit-oriented-development-need-the-transit/
- Chatman, D. G., Rodynansky, S., Boarnet, M., Comandon, A., Snyder, B., Patel, K., & Atkins, J. (2025). Assessing the Quantification Methodology for the Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities Program. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/99j4s0bp
Part 3 of our book club series on Yoni Appelbaum's 'Stuck', covering chapters 9–10. Appelbaum himself joins us to wrap up the series.
Read about the Lewis Center's work at lewis.ucla.edu.
Follow our Substack at uclahousingvoice.substack.com.
Email Shane at at shanephillips@ucla.edu and follow him on Bluesky and LinkedIn.
Show notes:
- Appelbaum, Y. (2025). Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity. Penguin Random House.
- UCLA Housing Voice episode 112: ‘Stuck’ Book Club pt. 1 with Attorney General Rob Bonta.
- UCLA Housing Voice episode 114: ‘Stuck’ Book Club pt. 2 with Giselle Hale.
- Sahn, A. (2025). Racial diversity and exclusionary zoning: Evidence from the great migration. The Journal of Politics, 87(4), 1302-1318.
- Reny, T. T., & Newman, B. J. (2018). Protecting the right to discriminate: the second great migration and racial threat in the American West. American Political Science Review, 112(4), 1104-1110.
- The Ezra Klein Show: What We Got Right — and Wrong — in ‘Abundance’ (YouTube) (Apple Podcasts)
- Stephanie Nakhleh’s chapter-by-chapter review of Stuck (part 1).
- Books:
- Leah Boustan, Streets of Gold
- Abundance, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson
- Why Nothing Works, Marc Dunkelman
- Public Citizens, Paul Sabin
- Urban Fortunes, John Logan and Harvey Molotch
California created a definition for major transit stops in state code and ties this definition to a lot of housing policies. Jacob Wasserman and Aaron Barrall explore the different ways this definition could be interpreted and how different approaches could mean more or less land available for increased development.
Show notes:
- Wasserman, J.L., Barrall, A., Millard-Ball, A., and Lee, A. (2026) “Stop” and Think about it: How the Different Interpretations of What Counts as a “Major Transit Stop” in California Make a Difference https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/41f86455a03a494c9a7b55e15bba1e8b
- Wasserman, J.L., Barrall, A., Millard-Ball, A., and Lee, A. (2026) Technical Appendix: Mapping High-Quality Transit https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7g41v63n#supplemental
- City of Burbank BRT concerns relating to designating areas for higher residential densities around transit stops pursuant to CA Senate Bill 79 https://granicus-aasmp-peak-files.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/attachment/pdf/4116669/SR_-_BRT_and_SB_79_Update.pdf?X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIATHOFOHMMEOCNXD2W%2F20260529%2Fus-east-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20260529T164040Z&X-Amz-Expires=3600&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Signature=a8fc425c4d77c31d5e9a46f90f029703bf03e4b558acdf02ec190f6269f9320b
Part 2 of our book club series on Yoni Appelbaum's 'Stuck', covering chapters 5–8. Giselle Hale joins us for the walkthrough, sharing her perspective as a former mayor and part of the Abundance movement.
Read about the Lewis Center's work at lewis.ucla.edu.
Follow our Substack at uclahousingvoice.substack.com.
Email Shane at at shanephillips@ucla.edu and follow him on Bluesky and LinkedIn.
Show notes:
- Appelbaum, Y. (2025). Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity. Penguin Random House.
- Sightline Institute’s Cruel Musical Chairs explainer video, plus its infographic version.
- Justine Underhill’s YouTube page.
- Episode 15 of UCLA Housing Voice: The Legacy of Redlining with Jacob Faber.
- Episode 43 of UCLA Housing Voice: Reexamining Redlining with Todd Michney.
- University of Richmond’s Mapping Inequality interactive redlining map.
- Books:
- The Color of Law, Richard Rothstein
- The Sum of Us, Heather McGhee
- The Affordable City, Shane Phillips
- The Warmth of Other Suns, Isabel Wilkerson
California passed a landmark law in 2022 prohibiting cities from mandating minimum parking requirements near major transit stops. Amy Lee explores how cities and developers have responded.
Show Notes
- Lee, A., Millard-Ball, A., & Manville, M. (2025). State Preemption in Theory and Practice: The Case of Parking Requirements. Urban Affairs Review, 1–31. https://doi.org/10.1177/10780874251385240
- Abstract: In U.S. law, states can override actions of local governments that contravene state interests. In practice, preemptions are often more ambiguous nudges, and local responses can vary by interpretation and interests. This paper explores one such case of state preemption: California’s 2022 law that limited local governments’ ability to require automobile parking. The authors find that the law’s complexity and ambiguity created intense debates about interpretations, in all jurisdictions, leading to heterogeneous implementation across cities. Local interests also motivated strategic responses to the law, which the authors present in a threefold taxonomy: cities interested in parking reform used it as a springboard; cities interested in parking reform but facing local resistance used it as a protective shield; recalcitrant cities treated it as an obstacle or subverted the law.
- California AB 2097 (2022): https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB2097
- City of Sacramento History of Parking Mandates Memo https://www.cityofsacramento.gov/content/dam/portal/cdd/Planning/parking-revisions/A-Short-History-of-Sacramentos-Parking-Mandates.pdf
- HCD AB 2097 Technical Advisory: https://www.hcd.ca.gov/sites/default/files/docs/policy-and-research/ab-2097-ta.pdf
- UCLA Center for Parking Policy https://its.ucla.edu/programs/parking-center/
We're doing a three-part book club series on Yoni Appelbaum's 'Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity.' This is episode one, covering chapters 1 through 4.
In the second half of the show, California Attorney General Rob Bonta joins us to talk about connections between the book's themes and his work enforcing housing and immigration law.
Read about the Lewis Center's work at lewis.ucla.edu.
Follow our Substack at uclahousingvoice.substack.com.
Email Shane at at shanephillips@ucla.edu and follow him on Bluesky and LinkedIn.
Show notes:
- Appelbaum, Y. (2025). Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity. Penguin Random House.
- Stan’s substack, Everyone is Welcome.
- Housing Voice episode 61: Homelessness is a Housing Problem with Gregg Colburn.
- Housing Voice episode 101: Beyond Zoning with John Zeanah and Andre D. Jones (Incentives Series pt. 4).
- 99% Invisible Breakdown of the Power Broker.
- Elmendorf, C. S., Nall, C., & Oklobdzija, S. (2025). The folk economics of housing. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 39(3), 45-66.
- Housing Voice episode 38: The Housing Supply–Migration–Income Relationship with Peter Ganong.
- Books:
- The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs
- The Economy of Cities, Jane Jacobs
- The Warmth of Other Suns, Isabel Wilkerson
- Golden Gates, Conor Dougherty
- Abundance, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson
- Why Nothing Works, Marc Dunkelman
- Public Citizens, Paul Sabin
- Albion’s Seed, David Hackett Fischer
- The Jungle, Upton Sinclair
- Polarized by Degrees, Matt Grossman and David Hopkins
We close out the Incentives Series with Lars Doucet offering a primer on land value taxes, the ultimate incentive-aligned housing policy. This is part 11 of our series on misaligned incentives in housing policy.
Read about the Lewis Center's work at lewis.ucla.edu.
Follow our Substack at uclahousingvoice.substack.com.
Email Shane at at shanephillips@ucla.edu and follow him on Bluesky and LinkedIn.
Show notes:
- Doucet, L. (2025). Land value return is needed, pragmatic, and achievable. Progress and Poverty [Substack].
Doucet, L. (2025). Enacting Land Value Return in Your Hometown. Progress and Poverty [Substack]. - Doucet, L. (2025). So You Want to Abolish Property Taxes. Progress and Poverty [Substack].
- Doucet, L. (2025). Mass Appraisal For The Masses: The Basics. Progress and Poverty [Substack].
We're joined by our co-authors to discuss a few Lewis Center studies on Measure ULA, a transfer tax in the city of Los Angeles, that made a big splash. This is part 10 of our series on misaligned incentives in housing policy.
Read about the Lewis Center's work at lewis.ucla.edu.
Follow our Substack at uclahousingvoice.substack.com.
Email Shane at at shanephillips@ucla.edu and follow him on Bluesky and LinkedIn.
Show notes:
- Manville, M., & Smith, M. (2025). The Unintended Consequences of Measure ULA. UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies.
- Ward, J., & Phillips, S. (2025). Taxing Tomorrow: Measure ULA's Impact on Multifamily Housing Production and Potential Reforms. RAND Corporation and UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies.
- Green, D., Jambulapati, V., Liebersohn, J., & Velayudhan, T. (2025). Fiscal Externalities of Transaction Taxes: Evidence from the Los Angeles Mansion Tax. Available at SSRN 5273034.
- Manville, M., Smith, M., & Phillips, S. (2025). The Consequences of Measure ULA: Some Clarifications. UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies.
- Shane’s blog post about the BAE report on the impact of a 15-year waiver on the ULA tax for new multifamily and commercial development.
Enterprise Community Partners has been running a renter wealth-building program since 2022. How’s it going? And what comes next?
Read about the Lewis Center's work at lewis.ucla.edu.
Follow our Substack at uclahousingvoice.substack.com.
Email Shane at at shanephillips@ucla.edu and follow him on Bluesky and LinkedIn.
Show notes:
- Enterprise Community Partners’ Renter Wealth Creation Fund website.
- The Renter Wealth Creation Fund term sheet.
- UCLA Housing Voice episode 108: Building Wealth by Renting with Shane Phillips and Bob Simpson.
- Phillips, S. (2025). Building Renter Wealth: An Evaluation of Shared Prosperity Rental (SPR) Housing Program Design and Feasibility. UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies.
- Executive summary for the SPR report.
Joined by a 20-year veteran of Fannie Mae, Shane shares findings from his work on a proposed new model for building renter wealth: shared prosperity rental housing.
Read about the Lewis Center's work at lewis.ucla.edu.
Follow our Substack at uclahousingvoice.substack.com.
Email Shane at at shanephillips@ucla.edu and follow him on Bluesky and LinkedIn.
Show notes:
- Phillips, S. (2025). Building Renter Wealth: An Evaluation of Shared Prosperity Rental (SPR) Housing Program Design and Feasibility. UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies.
- Executive summary for the SPR report.
- Shane’s 2021 article in The Atlantic, “Renting is Terrible, Owning is Worse.”
- Shane’s blog posts preceding and following the article in The Atlantic.
- Monkkonen, P., Carlton, I., & Macfarlane, K. (2020). One to four: The market potential of fourplexes in California’s single-family neighborhoods. UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies.
- The Multifamily Impact Council’s Multifamily Impact Framework.
- Enterprise Community Partners’ Renter Wealth Creation Fund website.
- Colorado Renter Rewards program website.
Fixed-rate mortgages are expensive, but adjustable-rate mortgages are volatile — but do they have to be? Kevin Erdmann pitches an alternative that captures the best qualities of both. This is part 9 of our series on misaligned incentives in housing policy.
Read about the Lewis Center's work at lewis.ucla.edu.
Follow our Substack at uclahousingvoice.substack.com.
Email Shane at at shanephillips@ucla.edu and follow him on Bluesky and LinkedIn.
Show notes:
- Erdmann, K. (2021). A Suggested Mortgage Amortization Structure: Fixed Amortization, Adjustable Principal. Mercatus Center.
- UCLA Housing Voice episode 106: Mortgage Lending Standards with Kevin Erdmann.
This is the shortened "highlights" version of episode 106. You can listen to the full interview here.
Was the housing market really oversupplied in the mid-2000s? Kevin Erdmann says no, and he explains how this misunderstanding is at the root of present-day affordability problems. This is part 8 of our series on misaligned incentives in housing policy.
Read about the Lewis Center's work at lewis.ucla.edu.
Follow our Substack at uclahousingvoice.substack.com.
Email Shane at at shanephillips@ucla.edu and follow him on Bluesky and LinkedIn.
Show notes:
- Erdmann, K. (2018). Housing Was Undersupplied during the Great Housing Bubble. Mercatus Center.
- Erdmann, K. (2024). Getting Corporate Money Out of Single-Family Homes Won’t Help the Housing Affordability Crisis. Mercatus Center.
- Erdmann Housing Tracker: Mortgages Outstanding by Credit Score
- Erdmann Housing Tracker: Follow-Up: Mortgages by Credit Score
- Erdmann, K. (2021). A Suggested Mortgage Amortization Structure: Fixed Amortization, Adjustable Principal. Mercatus Center.
Was the housing market really oversupplied in the mid-2000s? Kevin Erdmann says no, and he explains how this misunderstanding is at the root of present-day affordability problems. This is part 8 of our series on misaligned incentives in housing policy.
Read about the Lewis Center's work at lewis.ucla.edu.
Follow our Substack at uclahousingvoice.substack.com.
Email Shane at at shanephillips@ucla.edu and follow him on Bluesky and LinkedIn.
Show notes:
- Erdmann, K. (2018). Housing Was Undersupplied during the Great Housing Bubble. Mercatus Center.
- Erdmann, K. (2024). Getting Corporate Money Out of Single-Family Homes Won’t Help the Housing Affordability Crisis. Mercatus Center.
- Erdmann Housing Tracker: Mortgages Outstanding by Credit Score
- Erdmann Housing Tracker: Follow-Up: Mortgages by Credit Score
- Erdmann, K. (2021). A Suggested Mortgage Amortization Structure: Fixed Amortization, Adjustable Principal. Mercatus Center.
Shane makes a guest appearance on USC's Lusk Perspectives to talk state housing law, barriers to missing middle housing and condos, managing transportation systems in densifying cities, building wealth for tenants, and more.
Read about the Lewis Center's work at lewis.ucla.edu.
Follow our Substack at uclahousingvoice.substack.com.
Email Shane at at shanephillips@ucla.edu and follow him on Bluesky and LinkedIn.
Show notes:
- Overview of 40 years of California ADU reform by the California Housing Defense Fund.
- State of Los Angeles County Housing and Neighborhoods. Neighborhood Data for Social Change.
- Shane’s 2021 article in The Atlantic, “Renting is Terrible, Owning is Worse.”
- Shane’s blog posts preceding and following the article in The Atlantic.
- The Lewis Center report on “Shared Prosperity Rental Housing,” published in December 2025 and mentioned at the end of the interview.
Why do many U.S. states build so few condos? Muhammad Alameldin explains the role of construction defect liability laws — and how to fix them. This is part 7 of our series on misaligned incentives in housing policy.
Read about the Lewis Center's work at lewis.ucla.edu.
Follow our Substack at uclahousingvoice.substack.com.
Email Shane at at shanephillips@ucla.edu and follow him on Bluesky and LinkedIn.
Show notes:
- Alameldin, M., & Karlinsky, S. (2024). Construction Defect Liability in California: How Reform Could Increase Affordable Homeownership Opportunities. UC Berkeley Terner Center for Housing Innovation.
- Economic & Planning Systems. (2025). The Financial Impacts of Construction Defect Liability on Housing Development in California. Terner Center for Housing Innovation and the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR).
- Shoag, D., Romem, I., & Garcia, D. (2023). The First Step Is The Hardest: California’s Sliding Homeownership Ladder. UC Berkeley Terner Center for Housing Innovation.
In which types of homes are people safest from fires? Alex Horowitz shares research showing that multifamily is safer than single-family housing, newer homes are much safer than older homes, and that a single stairwell’s just as good as two. This is part 6 of our series on misaligned incentives in housing policy.
Read about the Lewis Center's work at lewis.ucla.edu.
Follow our Substack at uclahousingvoice.substack.com.
Email Shane at at shanephillips@ucla.edu and follow him on Bluesky and LinkedIn.
Show notes:
- Rodnyansky, S., Horowitz, A., Clifford, L., Su, D., Smith, S., & Trivedi, S. (2025). Small Single-Stairway Apartment Buildings Have Strong Safety Record. Pew Charitable Trusts.
- Clifford, L., Rodnyansky, S., & Horowitz, A. (2025). Modern Multifamily Buildings Provide the Most Fire Protection. Pew Charitable Trusts.
- Baird-Remba, R., & Horowitz, A. (2025). How States and Cities Decimated Americans’ Lowest-Cost Housing Option. Pew Charitable Trusts.
- Wegmann, J., Baqai, A. N., & Conrad, J. (2023). Here Come the Tall Skinny Houses. Cityscape, 25(2), 171-202.
- UCLA Housing Voice episode 97, Single-Stair Buildings and Eco-Districts with Michael Eliason.
We’ve been grappling with trade-offs between stricter building codes and declining affordability for over 100 years. Benjamin Schneider helps us trace the history. This is part 5 of our series on misaligned incentives in housing policy.
Show notes:
- Schneider, B. (2025). The Unfinished Metropolis: Igniting the City-Building Revolution. Island Press.
- Schneider, B. (2025 September 22). 106 Years Ago She Predicted Today’s Housing Crisis. What if we’d Listened? Planetizen.
- Wood, E. E. (1919). The Housing of the Unskilled Wage Earner: America's Next Problem. The MacMillan Company.
- Riis, J. A. (1890). How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York. Charles Scribner’s Sons.
- A brief history of tenements in the US.
Your city just legalized “missing middle” housing in its zoning code… now what? With Memphis, Tennessee, as a case study, John Zeanah and Andre D. Jones discuss the hidden non-zoning barriers to developing small apartment buildings — and how to lower them. This is part 4 of our series on misaligned incentives in housing policy.
Show notes:
- Zeanah, J. (2025). Beyond Zoning: Hidden Code Barriers to Middle-Scale Housing. Center for Building in North America.
- Garcia, D., Carlton, I., Patterson, L., Strawn, J., & Metcalf, B. (2024). Making missing middle pencil: The math behind small-scale housing development. UC Berkeley Terner Center for Housing Innovation.
- Zeanah, J. (2022 January 12). Memphis, TN Amends Local Building Code to Allow up to Six Units Under Residential Building Code (IRC) to Enable Missing Middle Housing. Opticos Design.
'Beyond Zoning' Abstract:
In recent years, planners have made zoning reform a key priority to enable housing supply, including “missing middle” housing … This article explores the barriers beyond zoning that can hold back development of middle-scale housing. It begins with a background on why these lesser-known codes matter for housing diversity. This is followed by a case study of a project in Memphis, highlighting the non-zoning barriers posed to the development of an infill collection of cottages and small apartment buildings, and how they were overcome. Next, the article delves into specific categories of barriers, from building codes and fire safety mandates to infrastructure and local ordinances, explaining how each can impede middle-scale housing projects. Finally, it concludes with an Action Steps for Planners section, offering implementable strategies for reforming codes and coordinating across departments to unlock middle-scale housing development.
The hosts gather to celebrate the 100th episode of UCLA Housing Voice. We also answer listener questions and announce the first book for our book club.
Show notes:
- Appelbaum, Y. (2025). Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity. Penguin Random House.
- Appelbaum, Y. (2025 February 10). How Progressives Froze the American Dream. The Atlantic.
- Phillips, S. (2020). The Affordable City: Strategies for Putting Housing Within Reach (and Keeping it There). Island Press.
- Lens, M. C. (2024). Where the Hood At? Fifty Years of Change in Black Neighborhoods. Russell Sage Foundation.
- Lens, M. C., & Monkkonen, P. (2016). Do strict land use regulations make metropolitan areas more segregated by income? Journal of the American Planning Association, 82(1), 6-21.
- 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.
- Lee, A. E. (2023). The Policy and Politics of Highway Expansions. UC Davis. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/13x3n8zr.
- Chapelle, G. (2018). Does social housing crowd out private construction? (Working paper). Science Po.
- Elmendorf, C. S., Nall, C., & Oklobdzija, S. (2024). What state housing policies do voters want? Evidence from a platform-choice experiment. SSRN.
- https://www.hcd.ca.gov/housing-open-data-tools/statewide-housing-plan-dashboard
- https://easyreadernews.com/aes-ruling-against-redondo-may-open-door-to-builders-remedy-developments-statewide/
- Episode 81: How New Zealand Passed Its Ambitious Zoning Reforms with Eleanor West
See remaining show notes and each host's favorite episodes at https://www.lewis.ucla.edu/2025/10/22/100-the-big-100-listener-questions-re-meet-the-hosts-and-book-club/
North American buildings are built different — literally. Councilmember Jesse Zwick explains how the organization behind our unusual standards is built to fail, and he makes the case for a new approach. This is part 3 of our series on misaligned incentives in housing policy.
Show notes:
- Zwick, J. (2025). Out of Code: The Hidden Costs of US Building Standards.
- Episode 78 of UCLA Housing Voice, on the relationship between building height and construction costs (in the US).
- Wikipedia article on the Grenfell Tower fire in London.
- Stephen Smith’s Slate article about elevator building codes.
- Episode 98 of UCLA Housing Voice, on elevator building code in the US and Canada.
- Strong Towns article featuring the quote by Lawrence Veiller.
Elevators in the U.S. and Canada cost 3–5 times as much as elevators in other high-income countries. Stephen Smith explains why and how our well-intentioned elevator standards make cities less safe and accessible. This is part two of our series on misaligned incentives in housing policy.
Show notes:
- Smith, S. (2024). Elevators. Center for Building in North America.
- Part 1 of the Incentives Series, Single-Stair Buildings and Eco-Districts with Michael Eliason.
Abstract:
Americans make over 20 billion trips per year by elevator – twice the number of trips made by what people think of as mass transit. Despite the association between elevators and high-rises, the average elevator in the United States only has four landings, with elevators being as much a tool for convenience and accessibility as for able-bodied necessity.
But despite being the birthplace of the modern passenger elevator, the United States has fallen far behind its peers. Elevators in the United States have remained a fairly niche item in residential settings – expected in a high-rise or a big new mid-rise apartment building, but otherwise largely absent from the middle-class home. In absolute terms, the United States has fewer elevators than Spain – a country with one-seventh the population, and fewer than half the number of apartments.
And behind its lack of elevators, North America faces a crippling cost problem. The price to install an elevator in a new mid-rise building in the United States or Canada is now at least three times the cost in Western Europe or East Asia. Ongoing expenses like service contracts, periodic inspections, repairs, and modernizations are just as overpriced. High-income countries with strong labor movements and high safety standards from South Korea to Switzerland have found ways to install wheelchair-accessible elevators in mid-rise apartment buildings for around $50,000 each, even after adjusting for America’s typically higher general price levels. In the United States and Canada, on the other hand, these installations start at around $150,000 in even low-cost areas.
This is the first episode of our series on misaligned incentives in housing policy. Michael Eliason shares insights from his book, Building for People, on building code reforms and eco-district redevelopment projects throughout Europe.
Show notes:
- Eliason, M. (2024). Building for People: Designing Livable, Affordable, Low-Carbon Communities. Island Press.
- Youtube video of Vauban, an eco-district in Freiburg, Germany.
- City of Paris website on the Clichy-Batignolles eco-district, with photos.
- Episode 59 of UCLA Housing Voice, on the Costs of Discretion with Paavo Monkkonen and Mike Manville.
- Google Maps view of the Confluence eco-district in Lyon, France and the neighborhood directly to the north.
- Episode 14 of UCLA Housing Voice, on Family-Friendly Urbanism with Louis Thomas.
- Check out Stephen Smith’s single-stair and elevator reform tracker at the Center for Building in North America website.
Housing vouchers provide critical assistance to low-income renters, but roughly 40% of vouchers go unused, in part due to difficulty finding landlords to accept them. Vincent Reina shares findings from a pilot program that instead gives cash assistance directly to tenants.
Abstract:
This article examines a new rental assistance program in Philadelphia, called PHLHousing+, that disburses unconditional cash payments directly to tenants to eliminate their housing cost burden. The program is designed as a 2.5-year randomized controlled trial that aims to test the impact of direct- to-tenant cash assistance on household outcomes compared with traditional housing vouchers. The motivations for the program range from the need for more flexible tools that respond to the diverse needs of low-income renters to the desire for a robust evidence base on effective policies to improve household outcomes. The article also discusses the evolution of the idea behind PHLHousing+ before the COVID-19 pandemic through to its development, using knowledge obtained from upscaling local pandemic emergency rental assistance programs. Finally, the article describes the program’s implementation, including participant enrollment, strategies to minimize benefits loss, and cash disbursement mechanisms. It reflects on the lessons learned throughout this process, such as the importance of flexible funding and a strong research-practice partnership. The goal is to provide guidance to those planning similar programs and inform local and national policy, especially on direct-to-tenant, cash-based housing assistance.
Show notes:
- Reina, V., Fowle, M., Jaffee, S., Mulbry, R., & Fortenberry, M. (2024). The Future of Rental Assistance. Cityscape, 26(2), 293-308.
- Reina, V., Jaffee, S., Fowle, M., Tanski, M., Mulberry, R., & Fortenberry, M. (2025). PHLHousing+: A Randomized Controlled Trial of a Cash-Based Alternative to the Housing Choice Voucher Program in Philadelphia, PA: Housing Outcomes in Year Two. Housing Initiative at Penn, Risk and Resilience Lab, and Philadelphia Housing Development Corporation.
- And a link to the working paper here.
- Episode 17 of UCLA Housing Voice, on using fair market rents to improve housing vouchers with Rob Collinson.
- Episode 87 of UCLA Housing Voice, on housing voucher lease-up rates with Sarah Strochak.
- Episode 88 of UCLA Housing Voice, on improving voucher outcomes with Dionissi Aliprantis.
- Episode 65 of UCLA Housing Voice, on reducing homelessness with unconditional lump sum cash payments with Jiaying Zhao.
- Reina, V. J., O’Regan, K., Jang-Trettien, C., & Kurban, H. (2025). Expanding Access to Rental Assistance: What Do We Know and Where Do We Go From Here? Housing Policy Debate, 35(3), 552-568.
Our next interview will be out soon. In the meantime, we're asking for listener questions for a special recording celebrating our 100th episode)(!!), and ideas for a UCLA Housing Voice book club. Send 'em to shanephillips@ucla.edu.
Seattle’s low-rise multifamily zones have produced more than 20,000 townhomes over the past 30 years. Tobias Peter discusses the impacts on affordability, homeownership, and more — including lessons for other cities.
Show notes:
- Peter, T., Pinto, E., & Tracy, J. (2025). Low-Rise Multifamily and Housing Supply: A Case Study of Seattle. Journal of Housing Economics, 102082.
- The full catalog of AEI Housing Supply Case Studies.
- The Urban Institute study on upzoning effectiveness: Stacy, C., Davis, C., Freemark, Y. S., Lo, L., MacDonald, G., Zheng, V., & Pendall, R. (2023). Land-use reforms and housing costs: Does allowing for increased density lead to greater affordability? Urban Studies, 60(14), 2919-2940.
- AEI’s review and critique of the Urban Institute study: Peter, T., Tracy, J., & Pinto, E. (2024). Exposing Severe Methodological Gaps: A Critique of the Urban Institute's Panel Study on Land Use Reforms. American Enterprise Institute.
- Episode 77 of UCLA Housing Voice: Upzoning with Strings Attached with Jacob Krimmel and Maxence Valentin.
Episode Summary: 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.
For people with disabilities, ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft can be a lifeline or a pain — or both. Abigail Cochran shares what she learned from individuals with disabilities about what’s working and what’s not.
Show Notes:
- Cochran, A. L. (2022). How and why do people with disabilities use app-based ridehailing? Case Studies on Transport Policy, 10(4), 2556-2562.
- 99% Invisible podcast episode on the “curb cut effect.”
- Venkataram, P. S., Flynn, J. A., Bhuiya, M. M. R., Barajas, J. M., & Handy, S. (2023). Framing availability and usability of transportation for people with disabilities. Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives, 22, 100961.
- Cochran, A. L., & Chatman, D. G. (2021). Use of app-based ridehailing services and conventional taxicabs by adults with disabilities. Travel Behaviour and Society, 24, 124-131.
Shared micromobility programs offering scooters and bikes have exploded across the US in recent years, but the benefits haven't been shared evenly. Anne Brown joins to discuss the equity goals and mandates cities are requiring of operators, and which seem to be most effective.
Show Notes:
- Brown, A., & Howell, A. (2024). Mobility for the people: Equity requirements in US shared micromobility programs. Journal of Cycling and Micromobility Research, Volume 2, 2024, 100020,ISSN 2950-1059, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcmr.2024.100020.
- Brown, A., & Howell, A. (2025.) From Paper to Practice: Shared Micromobility Requirements and Outcomes (preprint; forthcoming Transportation Research Interdisplinary Perspectives).
- Brown, A., & Howell, A. (2024.) Small fares for small modes: Discount Ride Programs and Equity in US Shared Micromobility Programs (preprint).
- Operationalizing Equity: US Micromobility Equity Requirements Database.
- MacArthur, J., Fang, K., & Thigpen, C. (2024). Taxing Shared Micromobility: Assessing the Global Landscape of Fees and Taxes and Their Implications for Cities, Riders, and Operators. Portland State University Transportation Research and Education Center.
- LADOT Year 1 Snapshot: A review of the 2019-2020 dockless vehicle program.
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.
Many studies have looked at the effects of new transit infrastructure on housing prices, gentrification, and other neighborhood changes. But how does housing policy — specifically rising rents and worsening affordability — affect transit? Mike Manville takes the guest seat in the first episode of our four-part series on transportation research: Road Scholars.
Show Notes
- Manville, M., King, H., Matute, J., & Lau, T. (2024). Neighborhood change and transit ridership: Evidence from Los Angeles and Orange Counties. Journal of Transport Geography, 121, 104048.
- Three previous episodes discussing why housing supply matters for affordability:
- Episode 79 of UCLA Housing Voice: Who Pays For Inclusionary Zoning with Shane Phillips
- Episode 83 of UCLA Housing Voice: Local Effects of Upzoning with Simon Büchler and Elena Lutz
- Episode 5 of UCLA Housing Voice: Market-Rate Development and Neighborhood Rents with Evan Mast
When a city proposes zoning changes, how do you know whether they’ll be effective? Aaron Barrall shares how we approached the problem in Los Angeles, with lessons for similar upzoning efforts around the world. This is the second episode in a two-part conversation.
Show notes:
- Barrall, A., & Phillips, S. (2024). CHIPing In: Evaluating the effects of LA’s Citywide Housing Incentive Program on neighborhood development potential. UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies.
- YouTube recording of Aaron’s and Shane’s presentation at UCLA on the report’s findings.
- Wikipedia article about the États-Unis neighborhood in Lyon, France.
- Episode 20 of UCLA Housing Voice: French Social Housing and the SRU Law with Magda Maaoui.
- Monkkonen, P., Carlton, I., & Macfarlane, K. (2020). One to Four: The market potential of fourplexes in California’s single-family neighborhoods. UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies.
- Gabriel, S., & Kung, E. (2024). Development Approval Timelines, Approval Uncertainty, and New Housing Supply: Evidence from Los Angeles. SSRN.
- 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.
- Hilgard Analytics 2024 update on City of Los Angeles housing permitting.
- Dillon, L. (Nov 18 2024). Los Angeles rezoning plan won’t spur enough new housing, report finds. Los Angeles Times.
- Summary of California Senate Bill 79 (2025).
- Information on California Assembly Bill 647 (2025).
- Barrall, A., & Monkkonen, P. (2024). The Fair Housing Land Use Score in California: An Evaluation of 199 Municipal Plans. UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies.
When a city proposes zoning changes, how do you know whether they’ll be effective? Aaron Barrall shares how we approached the problem in Los Angeles, with lessons for similar upzoning efforts around the world. This is the first episode in a two-part conversation.
Show notes:
- Barrall, A., & Phillips, S. (2024). CHIPing In: Evaluating the effects of LA’s Citywide Housing Incentive Program on neighborhood development potential. UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies.
- YouTube recording of Aaron’s and Shane’s presentation at UCLA on the report’s findings.
- Monkkonen, P., Manville, M., Lens, M., Barrall, A., & Arena, O. (2023). California’s Strengthened Housing Element Law: Early Evidence on Higher Housing Targets and Rezoning. Cityscape, 25(2), 119-142.
- Elmendorf, C. S., Biber, E., Monkkonen, P., & O’Neill, M. (2020). Making It Work: Legal Foundations for Administrative Reform of California’s Housing Framework. Ecology Law Quarterly, 47(4), 973-1060.
- Episode 59 of UCLA Housing Voice: The Costs of Discretion with Paavo Monkkonen and Mike Manville.
- Episode 79 of UCLA Housing Voice: Who Pays For Inclusionary Zoning with Shane Phillips.
Helping people move to higher-opportunity neighborhoods requires knowing which neighborhoods are actually better. Are we any good at it? Dionissi Aliprantis shares his research on measuring neighborhood opportunity and the rent assistance program features that could meaningfully reduce racial segregation.
Show notes:
- Aliprantis, D., Martin, H., & Tauber, K. (2024). What determines the success of housing mobility programs? Journal of Housing Economics, 65, 102009.
- 99% Invisible episode on chambre le bonne (maid’s rooms) in Paris.
- Episode 87 of UCLA Housing Voice, on housing voucher lease-up rates with Sarah Strochak.
- Episode 17 of UCLA Housing Voice, on using fair market rents to improve housing vouchers with Rob Collinson.
- Episode 58 of UCLA Housing Voice, on the health impacts of Baltimore’s housing mobility program with Craig Pollack.
- The book, Waiting for Gautreaux: A Story of Segregation, Housing, and the Black Ghetto, by Alexander Polikoff.
- Chetty, R., Friedman, J. N., Hendren, N., Jones, M. R., & Porter, S. R. (2018). The Opportunity Atlas: Mapping the childhood roots of social mobility (No. w25147). National Bureau of Economic Research.
- Bergman, P., Chetty, R., DeLuca, S., Hendren, N., Katz, L. F., & Palmer, C. (2024). Creating Moves to Opportunity: Experimental evidence on barriers to neighborhood choice. American Economic Review, 114(5), 1281-1337.
Housing Choice vouchers help lower-income tenants pay rent, yet only about 60% of issued vouchers result in a successful lease-up. Sarah Strochak joins to share how lease-up rates vary for different groups and markets, and how reforming voucher policies could improve the lease-up process and get more people into affordable homes.
Show notes:
- Ellen, I. G., O’Regan, K., & Strochak, S. (2024). Race, Space, and Take Up: Explaining housing voucher lease-up rates. Journal of Housing Economics, 63, 101980.
- Episode 17 of UCLA Housing Voice, on Housing Choice Vouchers and small area rents with Rob Collinson.
- Episode 64 of UCLA Housing Voice, on vouchers as a homelessness solution with Beth Shinn (originally aired as episode 21).
- Episode 29 of UCLA Housing Voice, on how landlords make leasing and eviction decisions with Philip Garboden and Eva Rosen.
- LA Times article about the Housing Rights Initiative lawsuit alleging landlords violated source-of-income discrimination laws in California.
How have conditions changed since 1970 in neighborhoods where Black residents are the largest racial or ethnic group? Mike Lens wrote a whole book on the subject: Where the Hood At? Fifty Years of Change in Black Neighborhoods. He takes the guest mic to share what he learned.
Book summary: Substantial gaps exist between Black Americans and other racial and ethnic groups in the U.S., most glaringly Whites, across virtually all quality-of-life indicators. Despite strong evidence that neighborhood residence affects life outcomes, we lack a comprehensive picture of Black neighborhood conditions and how they have changed over time. In Where the Hood At? urban planning and public policy scholar Michael C. Lens examines the characteristics and trajectories of Black neighborhoods across the U.S. over the fifty years since the Fair Housing Act.
Show notes:
- Lens, M. C. (2024). Where the Hood At? Fifty Years of Change in Black Neighborhoods. Russell Sage Foundation.
- Website for Lisa Belkin’s book about public housing integration in Yonkers, NY, Show Me a Hero.
- IMDb page for the Show Me a Hero tv miniseries on HBO.
- Million Dollar Hoods website.
- Episode 52 of UCLA Housing Voice: Community Land Trusts with Annette Kim.
- Episode 40 of UCLA Housing Voice: Valuing Black Lives and Housing with Andre Perry.
On January 7th, the Palisades and Eaton fires erupted in Los Angeles, killing dozens of people, displacing tens of thousands, and destroying more than 15,000 structures. What will this mean for housing affordability in the already-strained region? Hannah Hennighausen joins to share her research on the 2018 Camp Fire's effect on housing prices and migration, and its lessons for LA and other cities threatened by natural disasters.
Show notes:
- Hennighausen, H., & James, A. (2024). Catastrophic fires, human displacement, and real estate prices in California. Journal of Housing Economics, 66, 102023.
- Shane's white paper, "The Palisades and Eaton Fires: Neighborhood Data and Potential Housing Market Effects."
- Episode 85 of This American Life, “When the Beasts Come Marching In.”
- CAL FIRE fire hazard severity zone viewer (interactive map).
- 99% Invisible’s “Not Built For This” podcast episode on the Camp Fire’s ripple effect beyond the fire’s perimeter.
- Reporting from local journalist Alissa Walker on volunteers identifying cases of rent-gouging following the LA fires.
Rent control is one of the most hotly debated housing policies, and also one of the most researched. Konstantin Kholodilin reviewed over 200 rent control studies, dating back decades and spanning six continents, and he joins us to give an overview of their results.
Show notes:
- Kholodilin, K. A. (2024). Rent control effects through the lens of empirical research: An almost complete review of the literature. Journal of Housing Economics, 101983.
- Konstantin’s massive database of rent control policies across the world: Longitudinal database of rental housing market regulations: 100+ countries over 100+ years.
- Kholodilin, K. (2020). Long-term, multicountry perspective on rental market regulations. Housing Policy Debate, 30(6), 994-1015.
- Wikipedia article on ‘kommunalka’ (communal apartment).
- Fogelson, R. M. (2013). The Great Rent Wars: New York, 1917-1929. Yale University Press.
- Episode 36 of UCLA Housing Voice on rent control in India with Sahil Gandhi and Richard Green.
- Willis, J. W. (1948). State rent-control legislation, 1946-1947. The Yale Law Journal, 57(3), 351-376.
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.
Urban upzonings have been rare across the world, and many of the most significant occurred only in the past 5–10 years or less. One exception is the canton of Zurich, Switzerland, where cities and towns have been relaxing land use restrictions for over 25 years. Simon Büchler and Elena Lutz share their research on the long-term effects of these reforms on housing supply and rents, and the kinds of zoning changes that produce real-world results.
Show notes:
- Büchler, S., & Lutz, E. (2024). Making housing affordable? The local effects of relaxing land-use regulation. Journal of Urban Economics, 143, 103689.
- Anagol, S., Ferreira, F. V., & Rexer, J. M. (2021). Estimating the economic value of zoning reform (No. w29440). National Bureau of Economic Research.
- Greenaway-McGrevy, R. (2023). Can zoning reform reduce housing costs? Evidence from rents in Auckland. Economic Policy Centre.
- Asquith, B. J., Mast, E., & Reed, D. (2023). Local effects of large new apartment buildings in low-income areas. Review of Economics and Statistics, 105(2), 359-375.
- Gyourko, J., Mayer, C., & Sinai, T. (2013). Superstar Cities. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 5(4), 167-199.
- Mast, E. (2024). Warding off development: Local control, housing supply, and nimbys. Review of Economics and Statistics, 106(3), 671-680.
- Mast, E. (2023). JUE Insight: The effect of new market-rate housing construction on the low-income housing market. Journal of Urban Economics, 133, 103383.
- Bratu, C., Harjunen, O., & Saarimaa, T. (2023). JUE Insight: City-wide effects of new housing supply: Evidence from moving chains. Journal of Urban Economics, 133, 103528.
What happens to housing quality and affordability when any proposed development can be vetoed? Can the public sector reliably deliver most of the housing that people need? If it can, should it? Ant Breach shares insights from the Centre for Cities’ report on the United Kingdom’s homebuilding crisis.
Show notes:
- Watling, S., & Breach, A. (2023). The housebuilding crisis: The UK’s 4 million missing homes. Center for Cities.
- Watling, S. (2023). Why Britain doesn’t build. Works In Progress.
- Episode 59 of UCLA Housing Voice with Paavo and Mike M., on the costs of discretionary housing approvals.
In a previous episode we discussed Auckland’s unprecedented upzoning and its effect on housing production and land prices. This time we’re joined by Eleanor West to talk about the political, social, and economic conditions that made the reforms possible — not only in Auckland, but across New Zealand.
Show notes:
- West, E. (2024). Up-zoning New Zealand: the localisation of a globally mobile policy idea (Policy paper no. 003). University of Auckland: Economic Policy Centre, Urban and Spatial Economics Hub.
- West, E., & Garlick, M. (2024). Upzoning New Zealand. Works in Progress.
- Episode 45 of UCLA Housing Voice with Ryan Greenaway-McGrevy, on the effects of Auckland’s upzoning on housing production and land prices.
- Greenaway-McGrevy, R., & Phillips, P. C. (2023). The impact of upzoning on housing construction in Auckland. Journal of Urban Economics, 136, 103555.
- Greenaway-McGrevy, R. (2023). Can zoning reform reduce housing costs? Evidence from rents in Auckland. Economic Policy Centre. WP016, 203.
- Two of the recent articles on how people are more skeptical of supply-and-demand arguments for housing compared to other goods and services, while also being very persuadable:
- Nall, C., Elmendorf, C. S., & Oklobdzija, S. (2024). Folk economics and the persistence of political opposition to new housing. Available at SSRN 4266459.
- Elmendorf, C. S., Nall, C., & Oklobdzija, S. (2024). Do Housing Supply Skeptics Learn? Evidence from Economics and Advocacy Treatments. Available at SSRN 4955033.
- Episode 23 of UCLA Housing Voice with Michael Hankinson, on the relationship between at-large vs district-level political representation and housing supply.
- YouTube: The Spinoff vs the worst Auckland City Council meeting of all time.
Inclusionary zoning policies are commonly used to produce affordable housing and “social mix” in the U.S., but what about in Europe, where public housing and strong social welfare programs have historically met those needs? Anna Granath Hansson shares research on emerging inclusionary housing policies in the Scandinavian countries of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark.
Show notes:
- Granath Hansson, A., Sørensen, J., Nordahl, B. I., & Tophøj Sørensen, M. (2024). Contrasting inclusionary housing initiatives in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway: how the past shapes the present. Housing Studies, 1-22.
- Previous episodes on inclusionary housing/inclusionary zoning:
- Episode 77: Upzoning With Strings Attached with Jacob Krimmel and Maxence Valentin
- Episode 31: Inclusionary Zoning with Emily Hamilton
- Episode 79: Who Pays For Inclusionary Zoning with Shane Phillips
- More information on the EU court case about Denmark’s “ghetto law.”
- Sightline article on Portland’s fully-funded affordability mandate.
Inclusionary zoning policies use the market to produce affordable housing, but nothing comes for free. So who pays? Shane takes the guest seat to discuss his analysis of IZ in Los Angeles, making the case that it’s not developers or high-income renters who bear the cost, but all renters — poor, middle income, and wealthy alike.
Show notes:
- Phillips, S. (2024). Modeling Inclusionary Zoning’s Impact on Housing Production in Los Angeles: Tradeoffs and Policy Implications. UC Berkeley Terner Center for Housing Innovation and UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies.
- UCLA Housing Voice Episode 31: Inclusionary Zoning with Emily Hamilton
- 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.
- UCLA Housing Voice Episode 59: The Costs of Discretion with Paavo Monkkonen and Mike Manville (conversation about our research on the TOC approval process).
- Elmendorf, C. S., Marantz, N., & Monkkonen, P. (2021). A Review of California’s Process for Determining, and Accommodating, Regional Housing Needs. Background paper prepared for the California State Auditor.
- Wikipedia page on the Laffer curve.
- Phillips, S., & Ofek, M. (2022). How Will the Measure ULA Transfer Tax Initiative Impact Housing Production in Los Angeles? UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies.
- UCLA Housing Voice Episode 77: Upzoning With Strings Attached with Jacob Krimmel and Maxence Valentin.
- Details on the reduction of inclusionary requirements approved by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors on a 10–1 vote.
- UCLA Housing Voice Episode 78: Building Height and Construction Costs with Anthony Orlando.
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. Originally aired in 2022.
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.
We’ve long known that building more homes helps keep prices in check at the regional or metro area level, but what about the house down the street? Evan Mast shares two research studies that shed light on this important and controversial question. Originally aired in 2021. Updated show notes.
Show notes:
- Mast, E. (2023). JUE Insight: The effect of new market-rate housing construction on the low-income housing market. Journal of Urban Economics, 133, 103383.
- Asquith, B. J., Mast, E., & Reed, D. (2023). Local effects of large new apartment buildings in low-income areas. Review of Economics and Statistics, 105(2), 359-375.
- Bratu, C., Harjunen, O., & Saarimaa, T. (2023). JUE Insight: City-wide effects of new housing supply: Evidence from moving chains. Journal of Urban Economics, 133, 103528.
- Li, X. (2022). Do new housing units in your backyard raise your rents? Journal of Economic Geography, 22(6), 1309-1352.
- 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
Building taller lets us fit more homes on valuable urban land, but more homes doesn’t necessarily mean more affordable. Anthony Orlando joins to share his research on why taller isn’t always better — and the circumstances where it definitely is.
Show notes:
- Eriksen, M. D., & Orlando, A. W. (2022). Returns to scale in residential construction: The marginal impact of building height. Real Estate Economics, 50(2), 534-564.
- Episode 69 of UCLA Housing Voice, with Mike Eriksen discussing the Low Income Housing Tax Credit and “Crowd Out”
- Giuliano, G., Redfearn, C., Agarwal, A., & He, S. (2012). Network Accessibility and Employment Centres. Urban Studies, 49(1), 77-95.
- An, B., Orlando, A. W., & Rodnyansky, S. (2019). The Physical Legacy of Racism: how redlining cemented the modern built environment. Available at SSRN 3500612.
- Eriksen, M. D., & Orlando, A. W. (2024). A Cost Decomposition of Break-Even Rents for New Multifamily Housing Development. Journal of Housing Economics, 102012.
Changing zoning rules to allow taller and denser buildings may cause land values to go up, and public officials may try to “capture” this added value by requiring affordable units in new developments. But what happens when costs and benefits are out of balance? Seattle offers a cautionary tale.
Show notes:
- Krimmel, J., & Wang, B. (2023). Upzoning With Strings Attached: Evidence From Seattle’s Affordable Housing Mandate. Cityscape, 25(2), 257-278.
- City of Seattle webpage for the Mandatory Housing Affordability program.
- Lebret, D., Liu, C., & Valentin, M. (2024). Carrot and Stick Zoning. UEA 13th European Meeting.
- Manville, M., & Osman, T. (2017). Motivations for Growth Revolts: Discretion and pretext as sources of development conflict. City & Community, 16(1), 66-85.
- 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.
When the demand for housing rises, which kinds of neighborhoods respond by building more homes, and which just get more expensive? Nathaniel Baum-Snow joins to discuss his research on the different responses of urban, suburban, and exurban neighborhoods, and the many forms “supply” can take.
Show notes:
- Baum-Snow, N., & Han, L. (2024). The Microgeography of Housing Supply. Journal of Political Economy, 132(6), 1897-1946.
- Alameldin, M., & Karlinsky, S. 2024). Construction Defect Liability in California: How Reform Could Increase Affordable Homeownership Opportunities. UC Berkeley Terner Center for Housing Innovation.
- Saiz, A. (2010). The Geographic Determinants of Housing Supply. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 125(3), 1253-1296.
- UCLA Lewis Center research on housing demolition and redevelopment trends in Los Angeles.
We often talk about residential segregation by race or income, but we rarely explore it in the literal sense — as in segregation of residences: of one kind of housing from another. Ann Owens joins to discuss her research on how segregation manifests itself in our built environment in cities and neighborhoods across the U.S.
Black households make up a disproportionate share of rent assistance recipients. Andrew Fenelon discusses how a “two-tiered approach to housing support" favoring white homeowners helped create the disparity.
Before the 2000s, French real estate developers were prohibited from building social housing. Today, they build more than half of it. Julie Pollard shares how two seemingly unrelated policies came together to make this rapid shift possible.
In this episode, Shane combines insights from a recent trip to Tokyo with official data on housing production, affordability, land use policy, and more.
Each year, more money is invested in China's housing market than any other. Lan Deng shares how the market was shaped and the heavy role the government still plays, and what housing in China looks like today.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
“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.
“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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Episode Summary: 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.