UCLA Housing Voice – Details, episodes & analysis

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/2025/10/21/100-the-big-100-listener-questions-re-meet-the-hosts-and-book-club

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.

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

Show notes:

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

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

Show notes:

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

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

Show notes:

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

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

Show notes: 

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

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

Show notes:

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

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

Show notes:

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

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

Show notes:

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