UCLA Housing Voice

Skyscrapers! We can’t help but find them fascinating. Some cities are full of skyscrapers, and others have none. Developers built a 70-story tower on that parcel, but the proposed building just down the street is only 30 stories. How do developers decide where to build skyscrapers and how tall they should be? And are they really a profitable investment, or simply a monument to individual power and ego? Gabriel Ahlfeldt joins us from the London School of Economics to talk about his research on skyscrapers, a comprehensive analysis that catalogs nearly every 150-meter-plus building in the world. We discuss how skyscrapers influence the built form of cities, far beyond their typical boundaries within the central business district, and what the data can tell us about their profitability, their appeal to residents and workers, and the role that planners play in shaping where they’re found and how tall they go. Skyscrapers!Show notes:Ahlfeldt, G. M., & Barr, J. (2022). The economics of skyscrapers: A synthesis. Journal of Urban Economics, 129, 103419.Ahlfeldt, G. M., Redding, S. J., Sturm, D. M., & Wolf, N. (2015). The economics of density: Evidence from the Berlin Wall. Econometrica, 83(6), 2127-2189.Cheshire, P. C., & Dericks, G. H. (2020). ‘Trophy Architects’ and Design as Rent‐seeking: Quantifying Deadweight Losses in a Tightly Regulated Office Market. Economica, 87(348), 1078-1104.Ahlfeldt, G. M., & McMillen, D. P. (2018). Tall buildings and land values: Height and construction cost elasticities in Chicago, 1870–2010. Review of Economics and Statistics, 100(5), 861-875.Barr, J. (2013). Skyscrapers and skylines: New York and Chicago, 1885–2007. Journal of Regional Science, 53(3), 369-391.

Landlords don’t have a great reputation. But despite the central role that landlords play in the housing market, there is surprisingly little research into how they operate. Eva Rosen and Philip Garboden interviewed more than 150 landlords in Baltimore, Dallas, Cleveland, and Washington, D.C. in an effort to better understand the motivations behind their actions — in their own words. On the one hand, they see real problems with the actions of landlords. This includes frequent use of eviction threats and filings, reframing the landlord-tenant relationship into one of creditor-debtor, and application processes that seek to proactively identify “good” tenants — and which often violate fair housing laws, intentionally or not. They also see stark differences between small “mom-and-pop” and larger, more “professionalized” landlords, though perhaps not in the ways one might expect. On the other hand, they observe a system of housing provision that asks more than landlords can necessarily offer, while society as a whole shirks its responsibilities to many of those who need housing assistance. Eva and Philip join us to share their findings and discuss possible solutions.Show notes:Garboden, P. M., & Rosen, E. (2019). Serial filing: How landlords use the threat of eviction. City & Community, 18(2), 638-661.Rosen, E., Garboden, P. M., & Cossyleon, J. E. (2021). Racial discrimination in housing: how landlords use algorithms and home visits to screen tenants. American Sociological Review, 86(5), 787-822.Rosen, E., & Garboden, P. M. (2022). Landlord paternalism: Housing the poor with a velvet glove. Social Problems, 69(2), 470-491.Report on evictions in Washington D.C., including a flow chart of the eviction process on page 10. The Voucher Promise: A Book Talk with Eva Rosen. Hosted by the UCLA Lewis Center.Leifheit, K. M., Linton, S. L., Raifman, J., Schwartz, G. L., Benfer, E. A., Zimmerman, F. J., & Pollack, C. E. (2021). Expiring eviction moratoriums and COVID-19 incidence and mortality. American journal of epidemiology, 190(12), 2503-2510.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.Nelson, K., Garboden, P., McCabe, B. J., & Rosen, E. (2021). Evictions: The comparative analysis problem. Housing Policy Debate, 31(3-5), 696-716.Lens, M.C., Nelson, K., Gromis, A., & Kuai, Y. (2020). The Neighborhood Context of Eviction in Southern California. City & Community, 19(4), 912-932.Garboden, P. M., & Newman, S. (2012). Is preserving small, low-end rental housing feasible? Housing Policy Debate, 22(4), 507–526.UCLA Housing Voice Episode 07: Residential Mobilization with Kristin Perkins.UCLA Housing Voice Episode 12: Transit-Induced Displacement with Elizabeth Delmelle.

“The government and its housing agency are thus constantly, indeed permanently, engaged in acts of balancing competing demands.” This is the situation that the Housing & Development Board, which builds public, owner-occupied housing for the vast majority of Singapore’s citizens and permanent residents, has created for itself. And they’ve been phenomenally successful at maintaining that balance: 85% of Singaporeans own a public housing unit — on a 99-year lease, not permanently — and prices for new homes have stayed relatively affordable for decades. What did it take to get there, where has Singapore’s leadership fallen short along the way, and what lessons can be exported to other nations? Professor Chua Beng Huat of the National University of Singapore and Yale-NUS College gives us a detailed history of the small island nation’s public housing program, and explains how a responsive government and a program of constant policy “patches” keeps it all running.Show notes:Chua, B. H. (2014). Navigating between limits: the future of public housing in Singapore. Housing Studies, 29(4), 520-533.Wikipedia entry on Punggol, Singapore.Read more about the Housing & Development Board.Sin, C. H. (2002). The quest for a balanced ethnic mix: Singapore's ethnic quota policy examined. Urban Studies, 39(8), 1347-1374.Paavo’s interview with Yip Ngai-Ming on Hong Kong’s public housing.

M. Nolan Gray, a doctoral student at UCLA and author of 'Arbitrary Lines', dives into the transformative impact of Houston's 1998 minimum lot size reform. He discusses how reducing lot sizes from 5,000 to 1,400 square feet spurred affordable housing and community choice. Gray highlights the importance of giving neighborhoods opt-out options, promoting flexibility in land use, and balancing local preferences with development needs. His insights reveal how reshaping zoning can enhance urban living and affordability.

“We are at a point in Los Angeles and California, where we are seeing the population plateau or even decline for the first time since the 18th century. That is not only a statistical change it is a shift in how we define ourselves and our civic identity.” So says Christopher Hawthorne, one of many housing experts interviewed for a recently report published by the California 100 initiative. What are we going to do about it? In this final episode of season one, Shane is joined by Dana Cuff of UCLA cityLAB and Carolina Reid of UC Berkeley’s Terner Center to talk about their new report (co-authored with the Lewis Center). It outlines the facts that define California’s housing crisis, the history that got us here, and a vision for a more affordable, inclusive, socially and environmentally just future. The report calls for increased homebuilding and a greater emphasis on housing’s role in promoting the public good, not just private gain. Without both, California will fall short of its aspirations, and the rest of the U.S. may follow it down a path to worsening affordability, rising housing instability and homelessness, and declining economic and environmental sustainability.Show notes:Report with Policies and Future Scenarios: Phillips, S., Reid, C., Cuff, D., & Wong, K. (2022). The Future of Housing and Community Development: A California 100 Report on Policies and Future Scenarios. California 100 Initiative.Full report on Facts, Origins, and Trends: Phillips, S., Reid, C., Cuff, D., & Wong, K. (2022). The Future of Housing and Community Development: An In-Depth Analysis of the Facts, Origins and Trends of Housing and Community Development in California. California 100 Initiative.Roadmap and Summary of report (four pages).Visual representation of the four scenarios, created by cityLAB.A Terner Center report on the likely impacts of Senate Bill (SB) 9.Baldassare, M., Bonner, D., Dykman, A., & Lopes, L. (2018). Proposition 13: 40 Years Later. Public Policy Institute of California.Update: Project Homekey expanded in 2022.See more of the Terner Center’s work.See more of cityLAB’s work.

Is housing a human right — or should it be? What obligations would that place on government, and on each of us, to ensure that everyone has access to adequate housing? Casey Dawkins addresses these and many other questions in his new book, Just Housing. Dr. Dawkins traces the history of land and housing reformers across American history, and how our conceptions of housing justice have shifted over time. We talk about what it would mean for every household to enjoy housing security, regardless of whether they rent or own, and Dawkins poses the provocative argument that private property is not the cause of housing injustice, but the solution to it. We also discuss Dawkins’ proposal for a “negative income tax” and universal housing allowance that could address many of the current injustices and inequities in the housing market.Show notes:Dawkins, C. J. (2021). Just housing: The moral foundations of American housing policy. MIT Press.History of the right to shelter in New York.Waldron, J. (2019). Homelessness and the Issue of Freedom. J. Const. L., 27.Goetz, E. G. (2019). Fair Housing Is About Choice, Not Integration: 50 Years of the Fair Housing Act. University of Minnesota Center for Urban & Regional Affairs. Goetz, E. G. (2020). The One-Way Street of Integration: Fair Housing and the Pursuit of Racial Justice in American Cities. Cornell University Press.

How do developers choose where to build? We need to know the answer to make good policy, and our policy choices may determine whether housing developments advance economic and racial integration, access to opportunity, and sustainability, or they exacerbate segregation, stagnation, and environmental destruction. Dr. Dinorah González of Universidad Iberoamericana joins us to discuss her research into this question in Tijuana, Mexico, where hundreds of thousands of homes were built for low-income households as a result of a nationwide quasi-public mortgage program, INFONAVIT. The program had immense consequences for where people lived and the jobs, schools, and amenities they had access to — and much to teach us about getting the most from the homes and communities we build. Listen in as we chat about the industrialization of housing construction, the role of government in housing provision, suburbanization across the North American content, and grappling with the trade-offs that always accompany large-scale public policies and programs.Show notes:González-Ochoa, D. J. (2022). Policy-Induced Suburbanization: Mass-Produced Housing and Location Choices in Tijuana, Mexico. Housing Policy Debate, 1-18.Monkkonen, P. (2011). The housing transition in Mexico: Expanding access to housing finance. Urban Affairs Review, 47(5), 672-695.Grubbauer, M. (2020). Assisted Self‐help Housing in Mexico: Advocacy,(Micro) Finance and the Making of Markets. International journal of urban and regional research, 44(6), 947-966.YouTube video showing construction of concrete castings.Marosi, R. (Nov 26 2017). Mexico’s Housing Debacle. Los Angeles Times.Brian Potter’s blog, Construction Physics, on construction technology, innovation, and productivity.

How does the structure of political representation affect housing production, both in quantity and spatial distribution? And what does that mean for social and economic equity for traditionally disadvantaged and disenfranchised communities? Michael Hankinson joins us to discuss his research into how a shift from at-large to district-based elections has led to increased political representation but also declining housing production in affected cities. This “supply-equity trade-off,” as he calls it, has benefits as well as drawbacks, but the equity benefits may only be temporary if reduced supply leads to higher housing prices, which disproportionately hurt communities of color. As we discuss the implications of Hankinson’s work, we also consider complementary reforms that can preserve the representational benefits of district elections without the negative consequences of worsening housing scarcity.Show notes:Hankinson, M., & Magazinnik, A. (2020). The supply-equity trade-off: The effect of spatial representation on the local housing supply. Working paper.For more background on California’s shift to district elections: Plummer, M. (2019, Jan 2). The Massive Election Change In California You've Likely Never Heard Of. LAist.Coverage of the Bell scandal at the LA Times.Hankinson, M. (2018). When do renters behave like homeowners? High rent, price anxiety, and NIMBYism. American Political Science Review, 112(3), 473-493.On the popularity of building more housing, and politicians who support it: Andersen, M. (2022, Feb 8). Housing is popular, actually. Sightline Institute.On Berkeley enrollment and the impacts of “negative power”: Klein, E. (2022, March 13). Government Is Flailing, in Part Because Liberals Hobbled It. New York Times.

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.

“We have the resources, as a society, to prevent and end homelessness. And the knowledge,” according to Beth Shinn, professor at Vanderbilt University and co-author of In the Midst of Plenty: Homelessness and What To Do About It. So what would that look like? In this conversation, we discuss the Family Options Study, a randomized-controlled trial that evaluated different strategies for addressing family homelessness. The study compared long-term housing subsidies — primarily housing vouchers, which help households pay their rent — with rapid rehousing, transitional housing, and “usual care,” finding that vouchers led to much better outcomes at similar cost to the other options. We also get into what this research can tell us about reducing homelessness for other populations, such as veterans and people with severe mental illnesses. This is our first episode on homelessness in the U.S., and there will be more to come!Show notes:Gubits, D., Shinn, M., Wood, M., Bell, S., Dastrup, S., Solari, C., Brown, S., McInnis, D., McCall, T., & Kattel, U. (2016). Family options study: 3-year impacts of housing and services interventions for homeless families. Available at SSRN 3055295.Shinn, M., & Khadduri, J. (2020). In the midst of plenty: Homelessness and what to do about it. John Wiley & Sons.To learn more about housing choice vouchers: UCLA Housing Voice Podcast, Episode 17: Housing Vouchers with Rob Collinson.Aubry, T., Nelson, G., & Tsemberis, S. (2015). Housing first for people with severe mental illness who are homeless: a review of the research and findings from the at home—chez soi demonstration project. The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 60(11), 467-474.Cunningham, M., Galvez, M., & Peiffer, E. (2018). Landlords limit voucher holders’ choice in where they can live. Urban Institute.Costs of homelessness in Santa Clara (not San Mateo) County: Flaming, D., Toros, H., & Burns, P. (2015). Home not found: The cost of homelessness in silicon valley. Economic Roundtable.National Alliance to End Homelessness. State of Homelessness: 2021 Edition.Learn more about research on the Moving to Opportunity experiment.