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.Show notes:Wegmann, J. (2020). Residences without residents: Assessing the geography of ghost dwellings in big US cities. Journal of Urban Affairs, 42(8), 1103-1124.Gutierrez, T. (2021). Gridlock and Cheese-Stuffed Gorditas on Austin’s Taco Mile. Eater Austin.Haramati, T., & Hananel, R. (2016). Is anybody home? The influence of ghost apartments on urban diversity in Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem. Cities, 56, 109-118.

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.Show notes:Collinson, R., & Ganong, P. (2018). How do changes in housing voucher design affect rent and neighborhood quality?. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 10(2), 62-89.Bergman, P., Chetty, R., DeLuca, S., Hendren, N., Katz, L. F., & Palmer, C. (2019). Creating moves to opportunity: Experimental evidence on barriers to neighborhood choice (No. w26164). National Bureau of Economic Research.Rosen, E. (2020). The Voucher Promise. Princeton University Press.Collinson, R., Ellen, I. G., & Ludwig, J. (2019). Reforming housing assistance. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 686(1), 250-285.

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.Show notes:Yoshida, J. (2021). Land scarcity, high construction volume, and distinctive leases characterize Japan’s rental housing markets. Brookings Institution.Yoshida, J. (2020). The economic depreciation of real estate: Cross-sectional variations and their return implications. Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, 61, 101290.Gleeson, J. (2018). How Tokyo built its way to abundant housing. James Gleeson Blog.

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.Show notes:Faber, J. W. (2020). We built this: Consequences of new deal era intervention in America’s racial geography. American Sociological Review, 85(5), 739-775.Glotzer, P. (2020). How the suburbs were segregated: Developers and the business of exclusionary housing, 1890–1960. Columbia University Press.Redford, L. (2014). The Promise and Principles of Real Estate Development in an American Metropolis: Los Angeles 1903-1923. University of California, Los Angeles.Hoffman, J. S., Shandas, V., & Pendleton, N. (2020). The effects of historical housing policies on resident exposure to intra-urban heat: a study of 108 US urban areas. Climate, 8(1), 12.Slate, G. (2021). Freedom to Discriminate: How Realtors Conspired to Segregate Housing and Divide America. Heyday.Connolly, N. D. (2014). A world more concrete: real estate and the remaking of Jim Crow South Florida. University of Chicago Press.Hillier, A. E. (2003). Who received loans? Home Owners’ Loan Corporation lending and discrimination in Philadelphia in the 1930s. Journal of Planning history, 2(1), 3-24.Fishback, P. V., Rose, J., Snowden, K. A., & Storrs, T. (2021). New Evidence on Redlining by Federal Housing Programs in the 1930s (No. w29244). National Bureau of Economic Research.Aaronson, D., Faber, J., Hartley, D., Mazumder, B., & Sharkey, P. (2021). The long-run effects of the 1930s HOLC “redlining” maps on place-based measures of economic opportunity and socioeconomic success. Regional Science and Urban Economics, 86, 103622.Rothstein, R. (2017). The color of law: A forgotten history of how our government segregated America. Liveright Publishing.

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.

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.Show notes:Marantz, N. J., & Zheng, H. (2020). State affordable housing appeals systems and access to opportunity: Evidence from the northeastern United States. Housing Policy Debate, 30(3), 370-395.Marantz, N. J., & Zheng, H. (2018). Exclusionary zoning and the limits of judicial impact. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 0739456X18814924.Zheng, H., Marantz, N. J., Kim, J. H., & Houston, D. (2021). Accessibility, Affordability, and the Allocation of Housing Targets to California’s Local Governments.Li, L. H., Lin, J., Li, X., & Wu, F. (2014). Redevelopment of urban village in China–A step towards an effective urban policy? A case study of Liede village in Guangzhou. Habitat International, 43, 299-308.Guo, Y., Zhang, C., Wang, Y. P., & Li, X. (2018). (De-) Activating the growth machine for redevelopment: The case of Liede urban village in Guangzhou. Urban Studies, 55(7), 1420-1438.Kapur, S., Damerdji, S., Elmendorf, C. S., & Monkkonen, P. (2021). What Gets Built on Sites That Cities “Make Available” For Housing? Evidence and Implications for California’s Housing Element Law. UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies.Freemark, Y. (2021). Lessons from France for Creating Inclusionary Housing by Mandating Citywide Affordability. Urban Institute.

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.Show notes:Delmelle, E. C., Nilsson, I., & Bryant, A. (2021). Investigating Transit-Induced Displacement Using Eviction Data. Housing Policy Debate, 31(2), 326-341.Johnson, David S., Freedman, Vicki A., Sastry, Narayan, McGonagle, Katherine A., Brown, Charles, Fomby, Paula, … Stafford, Frank P. Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID): Main Interview, 1968-2015. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social ResearchLens, M. C., Nelson, K., Gromis, A., & Kuai, Y. (2020). The neighborhood context of eviction in Southern California. City & Community, 19(4), 912-932.Pennington, K. (2021). Does Building New Housing Cause Displacement?: The Supply and Demand Effects of Construction in San Francisco. The Supply and Demand Effects of Construction in San Francisco (June 15, 2021).

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?Show notes:Manville, M., Monkkonen, P., Lens, M., & Green, R. (2020). COVID-19 and Renter Distress: Evidence from Los Angeles. UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies and USC Lusk Center for Real Estate.Manville, M., Monkkonen, P., Lens, M., & Green, R. (2021). End of the pandemic, but not renter distress. UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies and USC Lusk Center for Real Estate.Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney.“The Academic Debate re: Zoning Reform in High-Cost Regions” in Phoenix Wright courtroom format.Desmond, M. (2016). Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. Penguin Random House.Rent Debt Dashboard, National Equity Atlas.Reed, D., & Divringi, E. (2021). Household Rental Debt During COVID-19: Update for August 2021. Philadelphia Fed.DuMonthier, A. (April 9 2021). Ameliorating the Post-COVID-19 Rental Debt Burden on California Renters. Berkeley Public Policy Journal.Gonzalez, S. R. Ong, P. M., Pierce, G., & Hernandez, A. (2021). Keeping the Lights and Water On: COVID-19 and Utility Debt in Los Angeles’ Communities of Color. UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation and UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge.

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. Show notes:Kuhlmann, D. (2020). Upzoning and Single-Family Housing Prices: A (Very) Early Analysis of the Minneapolis 2040 Plan. Journal of the American Planning Association, 1-13.Manville, M., Monkkonen, P., & Lens, M. (2020). It’s time to end single-family zoning. Journal of the American Planning Association, 86(1), 106-112.99% Invisible, “Stuccoed in Time.” February 2, 2021.Einstein, K. L., Palmer, M., & Glick, D. M. (2019). Who participates in local government? Evidence from meeting minutes. Perspectives on politics, 17(1), 28-46.Einstein, K. L., Glick, D. M., & Palmer, M. (2019). Neighborhood Defenders: Participatory Politics and America's Housing Crisis. Cambridge University Press.Freemark, Y. (2020). Upzoning Chicago: Impacts of a zoning reform on property values and housing construction. Urban Affairs Review, 56(3), 758-789.Andersen, M. (Jun 21 2019). This is what a street looks like 39 years after legalizing fourplexes. Sightline Institute.Andersen, M. (Aug 1 2021). We ran the rent numbers on Portland’s 7 newly legal home options. Sightline Institute.

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.