UCLA Housing Voice

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.

Adam Millard-Ball, an Associate Professor of Urban Planning, delves into the dynamic interplay between housing and transportation. With groundbreaking research from San Francisco's housing lottery, he reveals how reduced parking leads to decreased driving and increased transit use. Millard-Ball explains the powerful influence of parking availability over transit quality on travel behavior and argues for revising parking mandates to enhance housing affordability. He highlights that even in parking-free buildings, car ownership persists, yet driving decreases due to higher costs and inconvenience.

“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.

Social housing — homes reserved for lower- and middle-income households — has recently become something of a cause célèbre among left-leaning North American housing advocates. Given that, where better to look for guidance than in France? The SRU Law (Loi Solidarité et Renouvellement Urbain, or Solidarity and Urban Renewal) was adopted 20 years ago, requiring many French municipalities to increase their social housing stock to 20%, and later 25%, of all housing. The law has been successful, especially in Paris, but many urban areas continue to hold out, preferring to pay a fee to the national government rather than meet their social housing targets. We’re joined by Professor Magda Maaoui of the University of Cergy-Paris to discuss the law, the “outlaw municipalities” who flout it, and France’s inspiring progress in increasing housing production and reducing housing segregation and the concentration of poverty.Show notes:Maaoui, M. (2021). The SRU Law, twenty years later: evaluating the legacy of France’s most important social housing program. Housing Studies, 1-23.Acolin, A. (2021). The public sector plays an important role in supporting French renters. Brookings Institution.Freemark, Y. (2019). Doubling housing production in the Paris region: A multi-policy, multi-jurisdictional response. International Journal of Housing Policy, 1-15.La Haine, 1995.Les Misérables, 2019.French government summary of SRU law (translatable into English).UCLA Housing Voice, episode 13 — discussion of state planning mandates in the U.S., including Massachusetts 40B.

The international tour continues! This week we interviewed Hayden Shelby, Assistant Professor at the University of Cincinnati, about her research into the Baan Mankong (“Secure Housing”) program in Bangkok, Thailand. Built on the principles of community organizing, finance, and ownership, Baan Mankong has been celebrated as a global model of participatory slum/settlement upgrading for developing countries. But for all its successes, the program is not without its drawbacks, raising difficult questions about the balance between empowerment of poor residents on one hand, and the shirking of state responsibilities on the other. The lessons being learned in Thailand also have implications for community land trusts, tenant opportunity to purchase, and related programs in the U.S. and beyond.Show notes:Shelby, H. (2021). Empowerment or responsibility? Collective finance for slum upgrading in Thailand. International Journal of Housing Policy, 21(4), 505-533.Dowall, D. E. (1989). Bangkok: a profile of an efficiently performing housing market. Urban Studies, 26(3), 327-339.Dowall, D. E. (1992). A second look at the Bangkok land and housing market. Urban Studies, 29(1), 25-37.Elinoff, E. (2021). Citizen Designs: City-Making and Democracy in Northeastern Thailand. University of Hawaii Press.

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.