UCLA Housing Voice

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 celebrate a milestone with personal anecdotes, revealing unexpected backgrounds. They introduce a book club featuring 'Stuck' by Yoni Applebaum. Discussions dive into the complexities of zoning reform and the debate between prioritizing social vs. market-rate housing. They also analyze California's housing laws and tackle the lessons learned from New York's congestion pricing. Finally, the hosts reflect on their podcast journey and express gratitude to listeners.

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.

Tobias Peter, a senior fellow and co-director of AEI's Housing Center, dives into Seattle's successful low-rise multifamily zoning that has produced over 20,000 townhomes in three decades. He discusses the benefits of detailed case studies, the evolution of project designs, and why fee-simple townhouses are popular. Tobias explains the impact of inclusionary rules on housing production and debunks misconceptions about upzoning affecting property values. His insights offer valuable lessons for cities looking to enhance housing affordability.

Rob Collinson, an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Notre Dame, dives into the complexities of the Housing Choice Voucher program. He discusses the gap between eligible households and those receiving assistance, advocating for reforms to maximize its impact. The conversation explores how housing voucher design influences rent and neighborhood quality, with insights into the challenges landlords face and the critical need for effective tenant counseling. Collinson also sheds light on the implications of recent policy shifts on opportunity for low-income families.