Explore every episode of the podcast UCLA Housing Voice

Single-family rentals have a bad rap, but they also have underappreciated benefits. Tom Mayock shares how places with a bigger single-family rental stock provide better access to high quality schools  for disadvantaged kids.

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:

• Mayock, T., & Vosters, K. (2024). Single‐family rentals as a pathway for access to high‐performing public schools. Real Estate Economics.
• Mayock, T., & Vosters, K. (2026). Educational achievement gains afforded by moving to single-family rentals. Journal of Housing Economics, 71, 102123.
• Erdmann, K. (2024). Getting Corporate Money Out of Single-Family Homes Won’t Help the Housing Affordability Crisis. Mercatus Center, Georgetown University.
• Owens, A., Reardon, S. F., & Jencks, C. (2016). Income segregation between schools and school districts. American Educational Research Journal, 53(4), 1159-1197.

Rapid rehousing provides short-term rental assistance to help people experiencing homelessness find market-rate housing. Brian Blackwell shares new research finding that it may be more effective than we thought.

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:

• Blackwell, B., & Gross, M. (2026). Does Rapid Re-Housing reduce homelessness? Journal of Urban Economics, 154, 103889.
• Episode 64 of UCLA Housing Voice: Ending Family Homelessness with Beth Shinn.
• Episode 66 of UCLA Housing Voice: Chronic Homelessness and Housing First with Tim Aubry.
• Episode 87 of UCLA Housing Voice: Rental Voucher Lease-Up Rates with Sarah Strochak. 
• Evans, W. N., Sullivan, J. X., & Wallskog, M. (2016). The impact of homelessness prevention programs on homelessness. Science, 353(6300), 694-699.
• Cohen, E. (2024). Housing the homeless: the effect of placing single adults experiencing homelessness in housing programs on future homelessness and socioeconomic outcomes. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 16(2), 130-175.

Last time we talked about what preapproved building plans are and how the existing U.S. programs are going. This time we talked with Alkarim Devani and Eric Kronberg, two practitioners who are designing and implementing preapproved plan programs across North America.

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:

• Alkarim’s company, mddl.
• Eric’s companies, Kronberg Urbanists + Architects and Inc Codes.
• The Incremental Development Alliance.

Preapproved plan programs promise to speed up permitting and lower the cost of building new homes. How do they work—and are they working? Seva Rodnyansky shares findings from a review of more than 40 existing programs.

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., & Su, D. (2026). Preapproved Building Plans Help Cities Improve Housing Affordability. Pew Charitable Trusts.
• Animated intro for The Irony of Fate, which depicts architects having their building designs rendered increasingly bland and uniform by Soviet bureaucrats.
• The pattern book for New South Wales, Australia, with plans for buildings up to 216 units!
• The province-specific housing catalog produced by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.

Why is exclusionary zoning, which restricts land to expensive single-family houses, so commonplace in the US compared to other countries? Alexander Sahn shares strong evidence that local responses to a wave of migration by Southern Blacks in the middle of the 20th century played a big role.

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:

• Sahn, A. (2025). Racial diversity and exclusionary zoning: Evidence from the Great Migration. The Journal of Politics, 87(4), 1302-1318.
• Boustan, L. P. (2007). Black migration, white flight: the effect of black migration on northern cities and labor markets. The Journal of Economic History, 67(2), 484-488.
• Derenoncourt, E. (2022). Can you move to opportunity? Evidence from the Great Migration. American Economic Review, 112(2), 369-408.
• Grant, K. N. (2014). Relocation and Realignment: How the Great Migration Changed the Face of the Democratic Party. Syracuse University.
  Cui, T. (2024). Did race fence off the American city? The great migration and the evolution of exclusionary zoning [working paper].
• Gallagher, R., Shertzer, A., & Twinam, T. (2026). Zoning and the American Suburb (No. 26-37). Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
• Lens, M. C. (2024). Where the hood at?: Fifty years of change in black neighborhoods. Russell Sage Foundation.
• Episode 23 of UCLA Housing Voice, on political representation and housing supply with Michael Hankinson.

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.

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:

• 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.

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:

• 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.

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.
• 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

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. 

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:

• 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.

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:

• 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.

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:

• 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.