UCLA Housing Voice

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 often found in manufactured housing communities, colloquially known as mobile home parks or trailer parks — and in recent years, these communities have increasingly been under threat by predatory investors or by closures, whether for redevelopment or otherwise. Esther Sullivan joins us to discuss her ethnographic research on the closure of mobile home communities in Florida and Texas and how residents experience eviction in both states. She finds that while Florida offers more protections and financial support to mobile home owners compared to Texas, Florida residents are not necessarily better off. Her work highlights the potential downsides to public policies that operate through the private sector, and the need to center the recipients of public services in policy-making and program design.

Show notes:

• Sullivan, E. (2017). Displaced in Place: Manufactured housing, mass eviction, and the paradox of state intervention. American Sociological Review, 82(2), 243-269.
• Sullivan, E. (2018). Manufactured Insecurity: Mobile home parks and Americans’ tenuous right to place. Univ of California Press.
• Schmitz Jr, J. A., Teixeira, A., & Wright, M. L. (2018). How HUD and NAHB Created the US Housing Crisis. Presentation to a Conference to Celebrate Edward C. Prescott.
• Pendall, R., Puentes, R., & Martin, J. (2006). From traditional to reformed: A review of the land use regulations in the nation’s 50 largest metropolitan areas. Brookings Institution.
• UCLA Housing Voice Podcast episode 43 on the origins of redlining with Todd Michney.

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 one estimate increased the legal capacity for housing in the city by 300%. The goal of the reform, known as the Auckland Unitary Plan, was to increase production of multifamily housing and slow or stop rapidly rising housing prices. Did they succeed? Ryan Greenaway-McGrevy has published several studies on the results approximately five years later, and the news is quite good. We talk through the details of what Auckland did and the impact it had, and the lessons it holds for other cities considering (or hoping for) similar reforms. Taking Auckland’s lead, New Zealand adopted even more aggressive housing reforms in 2021, and we discuss that too.

Show notes:

• Greenaway-McGrevy, R., Pacheco, G., & Sorensen, K. (2021). The effect of upzoning on house prices and redevelopment premiums in Auckland, New Zealand. Urban studies, 58(5), 959-976.
• Greenaway-McGrevy, R., & Phillips, P. C. (2022). The Impact of Upzoning on Housing Construction in Auckland. Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers, 2689.
• Map of post-upzoning residential zones in Auckland.
• Charts showing housing permit activity before and after upzoning in upzoned and non-upzoned areas: Figure 3 and Figure 5.
• Garcia, D., & Alameldin, M. (2023). California’s HOME Act Turns One: Data and Insights from the First Year of Senate Bill 9. UC Berkeley Terner Center for Housing Innovation.
• UCLA Housing Voice episode with Evan Mast on supply affects and demand/amenity affects associated with new construction.
• Phillips, S., Manville, M., & Lens, M. (2021). Research Roundup: The effect of market-rate development on neighborhood rents. UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies.
• Greenaway-McGrevy, R. (Jul 7 2016). Ryan Greenaway-McGrevy: Density the only win-win situation for Auckland. New Zealand Herald.
• UCLA Housing Voice episode with Dan Kuhlmann on impact on house and land prices when Minneapolis eliminated single-family zoning citywide.
• UCLA Housing Voice episode with Evan Mast on market-rate development and neighborhood rents.

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 involvement of both the public and private sectors. Its goal was to reduce concentrated poverty and racial segregation; so how did it do? Rebekah Levine Coley joins us to share her research into the impacts of HOPE VI redevelopment on neighborhood poverty, racial composition, and community resources. We also discuss the lessons from earlier generations of public housing and urban renewal that informed HOPE VI, and what the program can tell us about gentrification, displacement, the role of the private sector, and much more.

Show notes:

• Coley, R. L., Spielvogel, B., Hwang, D., Lown, J., & Teixeira, S. (2022). Did HOPE VI Move Communities to Opportunity? How Public Housing Redevelopment Affected Neighborhood Poverty, Racial Composition, and Resources 1990–2016. Housing Policy Debate, 1-32.
• Phillips, S. (2020). The Affordable City: Strategies for Putting Housing Within Reach (and Keeping it There). Island Press. (Use promo code PHILLIPS for 20% off.)
• Fulton, W. (2022). Place and Prosperity: How Cities Help Us to Connect and Innovate. Island Press.
• Wilson, W. J. (1987). The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy. University of Chicago Press.
• Crane, J. (1991). The epidemic theory of ghettos and neighborhood effects on dropping out and teenage childbearing. American journal of Sociology, 96(5), 1226-1259.
• Goetz, E. G. (2013). New Deal Ruins: Race, economic justice, and public housing policy. Cornell University Press.
• Goetz, E. G. (2013). The Audacity of HOPE VI: Discourse and the dismantling of public housing. Cities, 35, 342-348.
• A great source of additional background and data on the HOPE VI program: Gress, T., Cho, S., & Joseph, M. (2016). HOPE VI data compilation and analysis. National Initiative on Mixed-Income Communities, Case Western Reserve University.

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 of redlining and similar practices. A key early player in this history is the Home Owners Loan Corporation, or HOLC, which commissioned the infamous “residential security” maps that separated residential neighborhoods into four categories, from green (best) to red (worst), based in no small part on racist assumptions about Black residents and homeowners — this is the origin of the word “redlining.” But while HOLC unquestionably has culpability in the racial disparities of the U.S. housing market, Todd Michney argues that the connection between HOLC and the institutionalization of redlining isn’t as direct or uncomplicated as is usually claimed. He shares the findings of historical research into the early days of HOLC’s housing market rescue efforts, and casts doubt on the commonly-told story about the origins of redlining.

Show notes:

• Michney, T. M., & Winling, L. (2020). New perspectives on new deal housing policy: Explicating and mapping HOLC loans to African Americans. Journal of Urban History, 46(1), 150-180.
• Winling, L. C., & Michney, T. M. (2021). The roots of redlining: academic, governmental, and professional networks in the making of the new deal lending regime. Journal of American History, 108(1), 42-69.
• Michney, T. M. (2021). How the City Survey’s Redlining Maps Were Made: A Closer Look at HOLC’s Mortgagee Rehabilitation Division. Journal of Planning History, 15385132211013361.
• Michney, T. M. (2017). Surrogate Suburbs: Black upward mobility and neighborhood change in Cleveland, 1900–1980. UNC Press Books.
• Surrogate Suburbs bus tour route!
• Jackson, K. T. (1987). Crabgrass Frontier: The suburbanization of the United States. Oxford University 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.
• Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America.
• Glock, J. E. (2021). The Dead Pledge: The Origins of the Mortgage Market and Federal Bailouts, 1913–1939. Columbia University Press.

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 the 1980s, when many governments began to shift their housing investments away from construction and toward direct financial support for renters. This shift is arguably one cause of the housing affordability crisis many cities find themselves in today, but in the face of opposing trends, two cities stand out for maintaining and even growing their social housing stock: Vienna and Helsinki. In this episode, Justin Kadi shares the history, policies, and politics that have contributed to the “remarkable stability” of these two cities’ social housing programs, and offers an incredible overview of how social housing is planned, financed, built, and operated in the places it’s been most successful.

Show notes:

• Kadi, J., & Lilius, J. (2022). The remarkable stability of social housing in Vienna and Helsinki: a multi-dimensional analysis. Housing Studies, 1-25.
• Eliason, M. (2021). Unlocking livable, resilient, decarbonized housing with Point Access Blocks. Larch Lab.
• Housing Voice ep. 32 with Diego Gil, on Chile’s shift toward a more neoliberal and demand-side housing policy framework.
• Housing Voice ep. 28 with Chua Beng Huat, on Singapore’s highly centralized public housing program.
• A brief history of “Red Vienna,” a product of the political victory of the Social Democratic Party in the early 1900s which led to tax reform and heavy public investment in housing.

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 sell. That leaves them with less money to buy their next home, so many who participate in shared-equity programs end up stuck in place or back on the rental market. As William Cheung and Kelvin Wong put it, these programs provide great “entry affordability,” but participants struggle with “exit affordability” when they want to move out of subsidized housing and buy on the private market. We discuss their research into shared-equity ownership programs in six different countries, including the U.S., and how reforms might help more homebuyers or improve household mobility — but probably not both.

Show notes:

• Cheung, K. S., & Wong, S. K. (2019). Entry and exit affordability of shared equity homeownership: an international comparison. International Journal of Housing Markets and Analysis.
• Read here about the San Francisco Downpayment Assistance Loan Program (which is now discontinued).
• Cheung, K. S., Wong, S. K., Chau, K. W., & Yiu, C. Y. (2021). The Misallocation Problem of Subsidized Housing: A Lesson from Hong Kong. Sustainability, 13(4), 1855.

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, explores this idea and its ramifications for Black uplift, and more specifically the valuation of Black property. Why are homes in Black-owned neighborhoods undervalued and underappraised? What role can — or should — homeownership play in closing America’s massive racial wealth gap? And how much can housing policy achieve when, as Dr. Perry puts it, “Property is not devalued; people are.” We discuss the book, the research that informed it, and his subsequent work identifying the keys to success for majority-Black cities and neighborhoods.

Show notes:

• Perry, A. M. (2020). Know Your Price: Valuing Black lives and property in America’s Black cities. Brookings Institution Press.
• The Negro Family: The Case for National Action (aka The Moynihan Report).
• Perry, A., Rothwell, J., & Harshbarger, D. (2018). The devaluation of assets in Black neighborhoods: the case of residential property. Brookings Institution.
• Read more about the Valuing Homes in Black Communities challenge.
  • …and the challenge winners.
• Hamilton, D., & Darity Jr, W. (2010). Can ‘baby bonds’ eliminate the racial wealth gap in putative post-racial America? The Review of Black Political Economy, 37(3-4), 207-216.
• The Black Progress Index.

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, Laura Redford discusses how developers used a combination of restrictive covenants, the judicial system, and advertising to build a divided city — one that not only separated white residents from Black residents and other people of color, but also maintained divisions by class: poor with poor, middle class with middle class, and rich with rich. Several idiosyncrasies led to Los Angeles pioneering this model, with many of its practices soon exported to other cities and towns across the nation. And while racial discrimination in the U.S. has been illegal (but not eliminated) for more than 50 years, class-based discrimination lives on more explicitly in present-day housing policies, with implications for both economic opportunity and racial segregation.

Show notes:

• Redford, L. (2017). The intertwined history of class and race segregation in Los Angeles. Journal of Planning History, 16(4), 305-322.
• Weiss, M. A. (2002). The Rise of the Community Builders: The American real estate industry and urban land planning. Beard Books.
• Some background on the term “curbstoning” (by the Realtors’ trade group).
• Fennell, L. A. (2006). Exclusion's attraction: Land use controls in Tieboutian perspective. U Illinois Law & Economics Research Paper No. LE06-006, NYU, Law and Economics Research Paper, (06-12).
• Culver City “Racist Santa” real estate advertisement from 1913.
• Kwak, N. H. (2015). A World of Homeowners: American Power and the Politics of Housing Aid. University of Chicago Press.

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, there’s a housing story to tell. Peter Ganong joins us to discuss his (and coauthor Daniel Shoag’s) research into the relationship between land use regulation, housing supply, household migration, and income. Their troubling finding: it no longer makes sense for many lower-income households to move to states with higher-paying jobs — after accounting for housing costs, some are actually worse off when they do so. This “skill sorting” of high-wage workers into expensive metro areas and low-wage workers into cheaper metros has worrying implications for accessing better opportunities, and much of it is driven by sharp restrictions on homebuilding in the highest-income states.

Show notes:

• Ganong, P., & Shoag, D. (2017). Why has regional income convergence in the US declined? Journal of Urban Economics, 102, 76-90.
• Hsieh, C. T., & Moretti, E. (2019). Housing constraints and spatial misallocation. American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, 11(2), 1-39.
• Jackson, K. (2016). Do land use regulations stifle residential development? Evidence from California cities. Journal of Urban Economics, 91, 45-56.
• Saiz, A. (2010). The geographic determinants of housing supply. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 125(3), 1253-1296.
• Bazelon and Yglesias blog post on Secret Congress.

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 focus isn’t the public housing developments themselves. Rather, it’s on the tenants — overwhelming Black, and disproportionately women-led — who called public housing communities home, organized and built political power within them, and used that power to make demands of the government. It’s a complex history without clear or consistent “good guys” and “bad guys,” and it complicates the narrative which argues that housing vouchers (or “Section 8”) are a complete substitute for the decline in public housing across the country. Whatever your connection to Atlanta or your knowledge of the US public housing program, there’s a lot to be learned from this case study on the politics of public housing in Atlanta.

Show notes:

• Rodriguez, A. D. (2021). Diverging Space for Deviants: The Politics of Atlanta's Public Housing. University of Georgia Press.
• Pritchett, W. E. (2010). Robert Clifton Weaver and the American City: The Life and Times of an Urban Reformer. University of Chicago Press.
• Parson, D. C. (2005). Making a Better World: Public Housing, the Red Scare, and the Direction of Modern Los Angeles. University of Minnesota Press.
• The Pruitt-Igoe Myth (documentary).
• Ingram, H., Schneider, A. L., & DeLeon, P. (2019). Social Construction and Policy Design. In Theories of the Policy Process (pp. 93-126). Routledge.
• W. E. B. Du Bois: A Study of the Atlanta University Federal Housing Area, 1934.
• Chaskin, R. J., & Joseph, M. L. (2015). Contested space: Design principles and regulatory regimes in mixed-income communities in Chicago. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 660(1), 136-154.
• 70 Acres in Chicago: Cabrini Green (documentary).