UCLA Housing Voice

By UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies

What's UCLA Housing Voice about?

Why does the housing market seem so broken? And what can we do about it? UCLA Housing Voice tackles these questions in conversation with leading housing researchers, with each episode centered on a study and its implications for creating more affordable and accessible communities.

Download our free app to listen on your phone

UCLA Housing Voice episodes:

05.15.2024
Ep 71: How China Created a Housing Market with Lan Deng
Each year, more money is invested in China's housing market than any other. Lan Deng shares how the market was shaped and the heavy role the government still plays, and what housing in China looks like today.
05.01.2024
Encore Episode: Japanese Housing Policy with Jiro Yoshida
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...
04.17.2024
Ep 70: Overcoming Resistance to Density with David Kaufmann and Michael Wicki
What makes people more or less supportive of dense housing in their communities? David Kaufmann and Michael Wicki surveyed 12,000 residents in six of the largest U.S. and European cities to find out.
04.03.2024
Ep 69: Low-Income Housing and 'Crowd Out' with Michael Eriksen
Subsidized affordable housing development reduces costs for lower-income households directly. It also reduces costs indirectly, by increasing the overall supply of housing — or does it? Michael Eriksen joins to discuss the issue of “crowd out” in affordable housing production.
03.06.2024
Ep 68: Summarizing the Research on Homelessness with Janey Rountree (Pathways Home pt. 8)
In this final installment of the Pathways Home series on homelessness policy and research, we discuss lessons and key takeaways from the previous seven episodes with our UCLA colleague, Janey Rountree.
02.21.2024
Ep 67: How We Cut Veteran Homelessness By Half with Monica Diaz and Shawn Liu (Pathways Home pt. 7)
Since 2009, homelessness among U.S. veterans has fallen by more than half. Among the overall population, it hasn’t budged. Monica Diaz and Shawn Liu of the Department of Veterans Affairs share some of the story behind the VA's success.
02.07.2024
Ep 66: Chronic Homelessness and Housing First with Tim Aubry (Pathways Home pt. 6)
The Housing First approach starts with providing homes to chronically unhoused people, but it doesn’t stop there — and that’s what makes it so effective. Tim Aubry shares findings from a major Housing First study and the keys to a...
01.24.2024
Ep 65: Reducing Homelessness with Unconditional Cash Transfers with Jiaying Zhao (Pathways Home pt. 5)
What happens when you provide unhoused people with a large sum of money? Jiaying Zhao shares the results of a study in Vancouver, BC, which include reduced shelter use, more spending on food and rent, and no increase in spending...
01.10.2024
Ep. 64: Ending Family Homelessness with Beth Shinn (Pathways Home pt. 4)
“We have the resources, as a society, to prevent and end homelessness. And the knowledge.” Beth Shinn discusses the Family Options Study, which found that long-term housing subsidies, like housing vouchers, led to much better outcomes at similar cost compared...
12.27.2023
Ep. 63: Understanding Vehicular Homelessness with Madeline Brozen (Pathways Home pt. 3)
In Los Angeles County, unhoused people living in cars, trucks, and RVs outnumber those in tents and makeshift shelters by 50%, yet vehicular homelessness receives relatively little attention. Many cities don’t even measure or report on it — at least...
12.13.2023
Ep 62: Who Experiences Homelessness, and Why with Margot Kushel (Pathways Home pt. 2)
Many people think they know about the lives of people experiencing homelessness, but those perceptions are often based on anecdote. Margot Kushel, MD joins us to talk about her work on the largest representative study of homelessness since the 1990s,...
11.29.2023
Ep 61: Homelessness is a Housing Problem with Gregg Colburn (Pathways Home pt.1)
Part one of Pathways Home, a six-part series on homelessness. Gregg Colburn, author of Homelessness is a Housing Problem, dispels myths about the causes of homelessness and identifies two key risk factors that explain why rates vary so much between...
11.15.2023
Encore Episode: Fair Housing with Katherine O’Regan
The federal government passed the Fair Housing Act more than 50 years ago. In that time considerable progress has been made at reducing discrimination in the housing market, but the law’s mandate to “affirmatively further fair housing” and reverse patterns...
11.01.2023
Ep 60: Housing Production and Rent Assistance Savings with Kevin Corinth
Housing scarcity is linked to higher rents and house prices, but it’s rarely connected to the cost and reach of safety net programs — and it should be. Kevin Corinth joins to share his research on how increasing housing production...
10.18.2023
Ep 59: The Costs of Discretion with Paavo Monkkonen and Mike Manville
Does discretion delay development, or do deliberate decisions divert disaster? Paavo and Mike M. share new Lewis Center research comparing approval timelines for discretionary and by-right projects, and they discuss the consequences of slow and uncertain approval processes for housing...
09.06.2023
Ep 58: Housing Choice and Public Health with Craig Pollack, MD
How does the neighborhood you live in affect your health? Craig Pollack, MD, joins to discuss the relationship between neighborhood poverty and asthma symptoms, the medical establishment’s growing role in the housing sector, and how better housing policy can lead...
08.23.2023
Ep 57: Origins of the Mortgage Market (and Federal Bailouts) with Judge Glock
The modern mortgage: fixed-rate, low interest, 30-year term, 80% loan-to-value, amortizing. It wouldn’t exist without the backing of the federal government, but how and why was it created? And what were the consequences for the housing market and broader economy?...
08.09.2023
Ep 56: Property Rights and Public Health in Nairobi, Kenya with Singumbe Muyeba
Studies in Latin America show that “secure tenure” —- protections against displacement by the government — can encourage resident-led development and economic growth in slum areas, as well as improve public health. Is the same true in the African context?...
07.26.2023
Ep 55: Condos Don't Cause Gentrification with Leah Boustan and Robert Margo
Condos don’t cause gentrification; gentrification causes condos. That’s the verdict of Leah Boustan and Robert Margo, who come on the show to discuss their research on condominium conversion restrictions in US cities. In addition to their research results, we talk...
07.12.2023
Ep 54: Accessory Dwelling Units and State vs. Local Control with Vinit Mukhija (pt. 2)
In our last episode we talked with Vinit Mukhija about how informal and incremental development is reshaping single-family housing cities in the Global North. This time Prof. Mukhija is back, getting into the weeds of the policies and politics driving...
06.28.2023
Ep 53: Informal Housing and Remaking Single-Family Neighborhoods with Vinit Mukhija (pt. 1)
Does your neighbor have an unpermitted home in their backyard? It’s more likely than you think, and it may be filling a valuable niche in the housing market. Vinit Mukhija of the UCLA Dept. of Urban Planning joins us to...
06.14.2023
Ep 52: Community Land Trusts with Annette Kim
We spend billions of dollars on affordable housing development every year, but many units lose their protections and return to market prices after a few decades. Why do we do things this way? Annette Kim joins us to discuss this...
06.01.2023
Ep 51: The Geography of Eviction with Kyle Nelson
Where are evictions most common? You might assume the answer is gentrifying neighborhoods, but evictions are actually most prevalent in areas of concentrated, persistent disadvantage. Joined by co-author (and regular co-host) Mike Lens, Kyle Nelson discusses his research on two...
05.17.2023
Ep 50: Immigration and Housing Precarity with Carlos Delclós
In the years leading up to the Global Financial Crisis, Spain’s housing prices doubled and its immigrant population increased by 1000%. How did immigrants fare when the market crashed? Carlos Delclós joins us to discuss the “citizen gradient” among Spanish...
05.03.2023
Ep 49: Sustaining and Growing Europe’s Social Housing with Sorcha Edwards
It’s difficult to sustain a social housing program, but it’s even harder to build one from scratch. Housing Europe, a coalition of social, public, and cooperative housing providers, is trying to do both. Sorcha Edwards, who serves as Secretary General...
04.19.2023
Ep 48: Housing Wealth and Retirement with Jaclene Begley
Housing is the largest source of wealth for most U.S. households, and wealth influences household decisions and opportunities in myriad ways. One is work: when people experience a significant loss of wealth, such as during an economic recession, they may...
04.05.2023
Ep 47: Geographies of Gentrification with Hyojung Lee
Does gentrification lead to increased displacement of vulnerable low-income households? To date, research findings have been surprisingly mixed. One explanation may be that most gentrification studies focus on individual cities, which vary substantially from place to place, or the entire...
03.22.2023
Ep 46: Manufactured Housing (aka Mobile Homes) with Esther Sullivan
Manufactured housing is the largest source of unsubsidized affordable housing in the U.S., and one of the only ways that low-income households are able to access homeownership. Due to a mix of public policies and social stigma, these homes are...
03.08.2023
Ep 45: What Happened When Auckland Upzoned Everywhere with Ryan Greenaway-McGrevy
In 2016, Auckland, New Zealand did something nearly unprecedented in the English-speaking world: It upzoned the majority of land in the city, and not just for three or four units per parcel. They went much further than that, and by...
02.22.2023
Ep 44: HOPE VI Public Housing Redevelopment with Rebekah Levine Coley
HOPE VI was a federal program running from 1993–2010 that sought to redevelop distressed, poor, racially segregated public housing into mixed-income communities. In that time it helped build nearly 100,000 new homes for people of varying incomes, and with the...
02.08.2023
Ep 43: Reexamining Redlining with Todd Michney
In recent years, the story of residential segregation and discrimination — and especially the practice of redlining — has gained well-deserved prominence in U.S. housing discourse. Equally important, the federal government has been directly implicated in the development and institutionalization...
01.25.2023
Ep 42: Vienna’s ‘Remarkably Stable’ Social Housing with Justin Kadi
Social housing — housing built for limited or no profit, often with government support — came to account for huge portions of the housing market in many Western European countries following World War II, but its prominence has declined since...
01.11.2023
Ep 41: Shared-Equity Homeownership with William Cheung and Kelvin Wong
Shared-equity homeownership programs help low- and moderate-income people afford buying a home, but they come with a catch. In exchange for help with your loan or a discount on your purchase, you need to pay back the government when you...
12.28.2022
Ep 40: Valuing Black Lives and Housing with Andre Perry
Andre Perry has spent years researching majority-Black communities, and he’s reached a stark conclusion: “There’s nothing wrong with Black people that ending racism can’t solve.” His 2020 book, Know Your Price: Valuing Black lives and property in America’s Black cities,...
12.14.2022
Ep 39: The Intertwined History of Class and Race Segregation in Housing with Laura Redford
Much has been written about the history of racial segregation in America’s housing market — and for good reason — but less is known about the role of class-based segregation. Using early 20th century Los Angeles as a case study,...
11.30.2022
Ep 38: The Housing Supply-Migration-Income Relationship with Peter Ganong
Prior to 1980, per-capita income gaps between poor states and rich states were persistently shrinking, driven by the migration of lower-income, less skilled workers to higher-paying regions. Since then, this “regional income convergence” phenomenon has declined. What happened? As always,...
11.02.2022
Ep 37: Public Housing and Tenant Power in Atlanta with Akira Drake Rodriguez
In this episode we do a deep dive into the history of Atlanta’s public housing program, from its inception in 1934 to the eventual demolition and redevelopment of many sites in the 1990s and onward. But Professor Akira Drake Rodriguez’s...
10.19.2022
Ep 36: Rent Control in India with Sahil Gandhi and Richard Green
Usually, cities with lots of vacant housing have slow rent growth (or low rents), while lower vacancy rates are associated with higher rents. But many Indian cities have an unusual, seemingly paradoxical problem: high vacancy rates and high rents. Why?...
10.05.2022
Ep. 35: Landlord Regulation and Unintended Consequences with Meredith Greif
How do we respond when regulations intended to help vulnerable tenants end up disadvantaging them even further? Professor Meredith Greif joins us to discuss her research and new book, Collateral Damages: Landlords and the Urban Housing Crisis, which explores how...
09.21.2022
Ep 34: Right to Eviction Counsel with Ingrid Gould Ellen
When eviction cases go to court, it’s typical for more than 90% of landlords to have legal representation, but less than 10% of tenants. This puts tenants at a considerable disadvantage, and helps to explain why few renters win their...
09.07.2022
Ep 33: Housing Transfer Taxes with Tuukka Saarimaa
In recent years, many cities have turned to real estate transfer taxes to capture a share of price appreciation and generate revenues for public purposes. Transfer taxes are relatively popular with voters, and they are easy to collect, but they...
08.24.2022
Ep 32: Chile’s “Enabling Markets” Policy with Diego Gil
Starting in the 1970s, the Pinochet dictatorship overhauled its housing policies in an effort “to transform Chile from a nation of proletarios (proletarians) to one of propietarios (property owners).” To achieve that goal, and others, Chile adopted what the World...
08.10.2022
Ep 31: Inclusionary Zoning with Emily Hamilton
Cities have lived with exclusionary zoning for decades, if not generations. Is inclusionary zoning the answer? Inclusionary zoning, or IZ, requires developers to set aside a share of units in new buildings for low- or moderate-income households, seeking to increase...
07.27.2022
Ep 30: Skyscrapers with Gabriel Ahlfeldt
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...
07.13.2022
Ep 29: Landlords, Discrimination, and Eviction with Eva Rosen and Philip Garboden
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,...
06.29.2022
Ep 28: Singapore's Public Housing with Chua Beng Huat
“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...
06.15.2022
Ep 27: Minimum Lot Size Reform with M. Nolan Gray
“Find ways to give vocal minorities opt-out mechanisms where they can have some of the land use rules that they want, but they don’t get to drag the whole city down with them.” That’s one of Nolan Gray’s primary lessons...
05.11.2022
Ep 26: The Future of Housing in California — and the Nation — with Dana Cuff and Carolina Reid
Shane Phillips 0:04 Hello, this is the UCLA housing voice podcast. And I'm your host, Shane Phillips. Each episode we discuss a different housing research paper with its author to better understand how we can make our cities...
04.27.2022
Ep 25: Housing Justice with Casey Dawkins
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...
04.13.2022
Ep 24: Mass Production and Suburbanization in Mexico with Dinorah González
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,...

What's UCLA Housing Voice about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

UCLA Housing Voice episodes:

Ep 71: How China Created a Housing Market with Lan Deng

Encore Episode: Japanese Housing Policy with Jiro Yoshida

Ep 70: Overcoming Resistance to Density with David Kaufmann and Michael Wicki

Ep 69: Low-Income Housing and 'Crowd Out' with Michael Eriksen

Ep 68: Summarizing the Research on Homelessness with Janey Rountree (Pathways Home pt. 8)

Ep 67: How We Cut Veteran Homelessness By Half with Monica Diaz and Shawn Liu (Pathways Home pt. 7)

Ep 66: Chronic Homelessness and Housing First with Tim Aubry (Pathways Home pt. 6)

Ep 65: Reducing Homelessness with Unconditional Cash Transfers with Jiaying Zhao (Pathways Home pt. 5)

Ep. 64: Ending Family Homelessness with Beth Shinn (Pathways Home pt. 4)

Ep. 63: Understanding Vehicular Homelessness with Madeline Brozen (Pathways Home pt. 3)

Ep 62: Who Experiences Homelessness, and Why with Margot Kushel (Pathways Home pt. 2)

Ep 61: Homelessness is a Housing Problem with Gregg Colburn (Pathways Home pt.1)

Encore Episode: Fair Housing with Katherine O’Regan

Ep 60: Housing Production and Rent Assistance Savings with Kevin Corinth

Ep 59: The Costs of Discretion with Paavo Monkkonen and Mike Manville

Ep 58: Housing Choice and Public Health with Craig Pollack, MD

Ep 57: Origins of the Mortgage Market (and Federal Bailouts) with Judge Glock

Ep 56: Property Rights and Public Health in Nairobi, Kenya with Singumbe Muyeba

Ep 55: Condos Don't Cause Gentrification with Leah Boustan and Robert Margo

Ep 54: Accessory Dwelling Units and State vs. Local Control with Vinit Mukhija (pt. 2)

Ep 53: Informal Housing and Remaking Single-Family Neighborhoods with Vinit Mukhija (pt. 1)

Ep 52: Community Land Trusts with Annette Kim

Ep 51: The Geography of Eviction with Kyle Nelson

Ep 50: Immigration and Housing Precarity with Carlos Delclós

Ep 49: Sustaining and Growing Europe’s Social Housing with Sorcha Edwards

Ep 48: Housing Wealth and Retirement with Jaclene Begley

Ep 47: Geographies of Gentrification with Hyojung Lee

Ep 46: Manufactured Housing (aka Mobile Homes) with Esther Sullivan

Ep 45: What Happened When Auckland Upzoned Everywhere with Ryan Greenaway-McGrevy

Ep 44: HOPE VI Public Housing Redevelopment with Rebekah Levine Coley

Ep 43: Reexamining Redlining with Todd Michney

Ep 42: Vienna’s ‘Remarkably Stable’ Social Housing with Justin Kadi

Ep 41: Shared-Equity Homeownership with William Cheung and Kelvin Wong

Ep 40: Valuing Black Lives and Housing with Andre Perry

Ep 39: The Intertwined History of Class and Race Segregation in Housing with Laura Redford

Ep 38: The Housing Supply-Migration-Income Relationship with Peter Ganong

Ep 37: Public Housing and Tenant Power in Atlanta with Akira Drake Rodriguez

Ep 36: Rent Control in India with Sahil Gandhi and Richard Green

Ep. 35: Landlord Regulation and Unintended Consequences with Meredith Greif

Ep 34: Right to Eviction Counsel with Ingrid Gould Ellen

Ep 33: Housing Transfer Taxes with Tuukka Saarimaa

Ep 32: Chile’s “Enabling Markets” Policy with Diego Gil

Ep 31: Inclusionary Zoning with Emily Hamilton

Ep 30: Skyscrapers with Gabriel Ahlfeldt

Ep 29: Landlords, Discrimination, and Eviction with Eva Rosen and Philip Garboden

Ep 28: Singapore's Public Housing with Chua Beng Huat

Ep 27: Minimum Lot Size Reform with M. Nolan Gray

Ep 26: The Future of Housing in California — and the Nation — with Dana Cuff and Carolina Reid

Ep 25: Housing Justice with Casey Dawkins

Ep 24: Mass Production and Suburbanization in Mexico with Dinorah González

Other shows like UCLA Housing Voice: