In this episode, Professor of Economics Dr. Bree Lang talks with students from the UC Riverside School of Public Policy about Low-Income Housing and the Housing Crisis.

About Bree Lang:

Bree Lang is an economics professor at the University of California, Riverside. Her research areas include urban economics, taxation, subsidized housing, and public finance.

Learn more about Bree Lang via https://sites.google.com/site/breejoneslang/ 

Podcast Highlights:

“The US Department of Housing and Urban Development defines affordability as someone who is spending 30 percent or less of their income on housing. And if you look in California in particular, in the mid-2010s, 80 percent of households were spending more than 30 percent of their income on housing. In the mid-2000s, 30% of people were spending over 50% of their income on rent.”

-       Bree Lang on the severity of the housing crisis and its effect on families. 

“If I want to be optimistic for just one moment, I think that COVID has also shined a light on a lot of these root problems where we are talking about kind of this inequality and upward mobility. I think that we're more likely to be having conversations about those big picture issues.”

-       Bree Lang on the topic of COVID-19 and its impact on the discussion surrounding the housing crisis.

“I think it's important to be open-minded about these things and to be willing to listen to people so that we can come to a solution that's going to work for everybody.”

-       Bree Lang on the topic of solving the housing crisis.

Guest:

Dr. Bree Lang (Professor of Economics)

Interviewers:

Kevin Karami (UCR Public Policy Major, Dean’s Chief Ambassador)

Raiyan Kalam (UCR Public Policy Major, Dean’s Ambassador)

Music by:

C Codaine

https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Xylo-Ziko/Minimal_1625

https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Xylo-Ziko/Phase

Commercial Links:

https://spp.ucr.edu/mpp

This is a production of the UCR School of Public Policy: https://spp.ucr.edu/

Subscribe to this podcast so you don’t miss an episode. Learn more about the series and other episodes via https://spp.ucr.edu/podcast.