Neighborhood Defenders: Participatory Politics and America's Housing Crisis

The book explores how neighborhood participation in the housing permitting process exacerbates existing political inequalities, limits the housing supply, and contributes to the current affordable housing crisis.

It highlights that individuals who participate in these processes, termed 'neighborhood defenders,' are often socioeconomically advantaged and use land use regulations to delay or prevent new housing projects, leading to diminished housing stock and higher housing costs.

The authors use sweeping data, case studies, and empirical analyses to illustrate how these participatory institutions perversely reproduce inequality.