UCLA Housing Voice

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? According to research by Dr. Sahil Gandhi and Professor Richard Green, a major contributor is insecure property rights — specifically, very strict rent control regulations and an inadequate supply of judges to rule in tenant eviction cases. We discuss how policies that increase risk and reduce profits — beyond a certain point, anyway — can lead some landlords to keep their units vacant rather than rent them out, with negative consequences for the entire housing market. We also explore the differences between “first generation” and “second generation” rent controls, and the reasons many cities across the world have shifted from the former to the latter.

Show notes:

• Gandhi, S., Green, R. K., & Patranabis, S. (2022). Insecure property rights and the housing market: Explaining India’s housing vacancy paradox. Journal of Urban Economics, 131, 103490.
• Tandel, V., Patel, S., Gandhi, S., Pethe, A., & Agarwal, K. (2016). Decline of rental housing in India: The case of Mumbai. Environment and Urbanization, 28(1), 259-274.
• Diamond, R., McQuade, T., & Qian, F. (2019). The effects of rent control expansion on tenants, landlords, and inequality: Evidence from San Francisco. American Economic Review, 109(9), 3365-94.
• Phillips, S. (2020). Does the Los Angeles region have too many vacant homes? UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies.
• Arnott, R. (1995). Time for revisionism on rent control? Journal of economic perspectives, 9(1), 99-120.
• Sims, D. P. (2007). Out of control: What can we learn from the end of Massachusetts rent control? Journal of Urban Economics, 61(1), 129-151.
• Another conversation on video between Sahil Gandhi and Paavo Monkkonen on rent control in India (click the tab “India: Rent Control” on the left).

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 penalties levied against landlords can lead to stricter screening, harassment, and informal eviction of renters who may already struggle to find adequate housing. Far from proposing that we do away with tenant protections, Greif asks us to consider the trade-offs inherent in many policy decisions. Before we can come up with better solutions, we first need to grapple with these unintended (but often predictable) consequences — and recognize how our policies and regulations may be producing exactly the behaviors we say we want to discourage.

Show notes:

• Greif, M. (2018). Regulating landlords: Unintended consequences for poor tenants. City & Community, 17(3), 658-674.
• Greif, M. (2022). Collateral Damages: Landlords and the Urban Housing Crisis. Russell Sage Foundation.
• Background on the expansion of criminal nuisance laws and their disparate racial impacts in California: Dillon, L., Poston, B., & Barajas, J. (Nov 19 2020). Black and Latino renters face eviction, exclusion amid police crackdowns in California. Los Angeles Times.
• Mead, J., Hatch, M., Tighe, J. R., Pappas, M., Andrasik, K., & Bonham, E. (2017). Who is a nuisance? Criminal activity nuisance ordinances in Ohio. 
• Desmond, M. (2016). Evicted: Poverty and profit in the American city. Crown.
• Our earlier episode on landlords with Eva Rosen and Philip Garboden.

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 eviction cases; many don’t bother showing up for court hearings at all. Advocates argue that providing free legal representation to tenants — a policy known as “right to counsel” or “universal access to counsel” — would reduce evictions, but there have been few opportunities to study it in an experimental setting. Ingrid Gould Ellen of NYU joins us to talk about the impacts of the policy in New York City, the first U.S. city to adopt a right to counsel, starting with 10 ZIP codes in 2017 and expanding in subsequent years. We learn how the program has affected eviction filings, the share of tenants who receive legal representation, and the number of evictions executed by the court, and we discuss the wider context of housing instability and eviction — including the limitations and harder-to-measure benefits of a lawyer-based eviction reduction strategy.

Show notes:

• Ellen, I. G., O’Regan, K., House, S., & Brenner, R. (2021). Do lawyers matter? Early evidence on eviction patterns after the rollout of universal access to Counsel in New York City. Housing Policy Debate, 31(3-5), 540-561.
• The New York City Tenement Museum website.
• UCLA Housing Voice episode 29 on landlords, discrimination, and serial eviction filings with Eva Rosen and Philip Garboden.
• Abramson, B. (2021). The Welfare Effects of Eviction and Homelessness Policies. Job market paper.
• Cassidy, M. T., & Currie, J. (2022). The Effects of Legal Representation on Tenant Outcomes in Housing Court: Evidence from New York City's Universal Access Program (No. w29836). National Bureau of Economic Research.
• Collinson, R and Reed, D. (2018). The Effects of Evictions on Low-Income Households. 
• Hoffman, D. A., & Strezhnev, A. (2022). Longer Trips to Court Cause Evictions. U of Penn, Inst for Law & Econ Research Paper No. 22-29.
• Lens, M. C., Nelson, K., Gromis, A., & Kuai, Y. (2020). The neighborhood context of eviction in Southern California. City & Community, 19(4), 912-932.
• Nelson, K. R. (2022). Litigating the Housing Crisis: Legal Assistance and the Institutional Life of Eviction in Los Angeles. Doctoral dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles.
• Nelson, K., Gromis, A., Kuai, Y., & Lens, M. C. (2021). Spatial concentration and spillover: Eviction dynamics in neighborhoods of Los Angeles, California, 2005–2015. Housing Policy Debate, 31(3-5), 670-695.
• 2021 press release on NYC program expansion: New York City's First-in-Nation Right-to-Counsel Program Expanded Citywide Ahead of Schedule.

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 also have disadvantages compared to property taxes and land value taxes. (Shane has also endorsed higher, more progressive transfer taxes in Los Angeles.) Professor Tuukka Saarimaa joins us to discuss one such drawback from his research in Helsinki, Finland: by increasing the cost of moving, transfer taxes may reduce household mobility, making it less likely that people will live in the housing best suited to their needs. But while imposing taxes can discourage socially beneficial activities, spending them can also improve people’s lives, and we consider how this balance is met with housing transfer taxes in particular.

Show notes:

• Eerola, E., Harjunen, O., Lyytikäinen, T., & Saarimaa, T. (2021). Revisiting the effects of housing transfer taxes. Journal of Urban Economics, 124, 103367.
• Phillips, S. (2020). A Call For Real Estate Transfer Tax Reform. UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies.
• Martin-Straw, J. (2022 May 20). City Budget Sessions – Property Transfer Tax Debuts as 3rd Largest Income Source. Culver City Crossroads.
• Wagner, D. (2021 Dec 17). Ballot Initiative Aims To Fight LA Homelessness By Taxing Top-Dollar Property Deals. LAist. 
• Blanchflower, D. G., & Oswald, A. J. (2013). Does high home-ownership impair the labor market? (No. w19079). National Bureau of Economic Research.
• Freemark, Y. (2020). Upzoning Chicago: Impacts of a zoning reform on property values and housing construction. Urban Affairs Review, 56(3), 758-789.
• Saarimaa, T., & Tukiainen, J. (2014). I don't care to belong to any club that will have me as a member: empirical analysis of municipal mergers. Political Science Research and Methods, 2(1), 97-117.
• Bratu, C., Harjunen, O., & Saarimaa, T. (2021). City-wide effects of new housing supply: Evidence from moving chains. VATT Institute for Economic Research Working Papers, 146.

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 Bank would later call an “enabling markets” policy — an approach that reduced the role of government in housing provision and delegated more authority to the private sector. These reforms had far-reaching consequences, not only within Chile but beyond its borders as other nations followed its lead. Diego Gil joins us to share the history of the enabling markets approach and its impacts, both positive and negative. On the one hand, the reforms led to an impressive expansion of the formal housing sector. On the other hand, homes for low-income households were often built in poorly located, inaccessible areas. We explore the difficult task of balancing government regulation and market efficiency, the need for policies that address housing supply and housing demand, and Gil’s proposed alternative to the enabling markets policy.

Show notes:

• Mc Cawley, D. G. (2019). Law and Inclusive urban development: lessons from Chile’s enabling markets housing policy regime. The American Journal of Comparative Law, 67(3), 587-636.
• Machuca (movie).
• World Bank report: Housing: Enabling Markets to Work, 1993.
• Turner, J.F.C. (1976). Housing by People: Towards Autonomy in Building Environments. 
• Abrams, C. (1966). Man's Struggle for Shelter in an Urbanizing World. MIT Press.
• Hernando De Soto: The Other Path: The Invisible Revolution in the Third World, 1989.
• Planet Money podcast episodes about the Chicago Boys: Part 1, Part 2.
• More on measuring housing needs/deficits in the U.S. context: Housing Voice episode 13 with Nick Marantz and Echo Zheng.
  • And episode 19 on slum upgrading in Bangkok, Thailand.
  • And episode 24 on suburbanization in Mexico.
  • And episode 31 on inclusionary zoning. 
• Kuai, Y. (2021). Flying Under the Radar: 4% Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Program (Doctoral dissertation, UCLA).
• Celhay, P. A., & Gil, D. (2020). The function and credibility of urban slums: Evidence on informal settlements and affordable housing in Chile. Cities, 99, 102605.

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 the supply of affordable homes and integrate neighborhoods racially and socioeconomically. But how well does it accomplish these goals? This week we’re joined by the Mercatus Center’s Dr. Emily Hamilton to discuss her research on how IZ programs have impacted homebuilding and housing prices in the Washington, D.C. region, and the ironic reality that the success of inclusionary zoning relies on the continued existence of exclusionary zoning. Also, Shane and Mike rant about nexus studies.

Show notes:

• Hamilton, E. (2021). Inclusionary zoning and housing market outcomes. Cityscape, 23(1), 161-194.
• Manville, M., & Osman, T. (2017). Motivations for growth revolts: Discretion and pretext as sources of development conflict. City & Community, 16(1), 66-85.
• Bento, A., Lowe, S., Knaap, G. J., & Chakraborty, A. (2009). Housing market effects of inclusionary zoning. Cityscape, 7-26.
• Li, F., & Guo, Z. (2022). How Does an Expansion of Mandatory Inclusionary Housing Affect Housing Supply? Evidence From London (UK). Journal of the American Planning Association, 88(1), 83-96.
• Schleicher, D. (2012). City unplanning. Yale Law Journal, 7(122), 1670-1737.
• Phillips, S. (2022). Building Up the" Zoning Buffer": Using Broad Upzones to Increase Housing Capacity Without Increasing Land Values. UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies.
• Background on the inclusionary zoning program in Los Angeles (struck down in court, but later enabled by the state legislature).
• More on housing voucher policy in our interview with Rob Collinson.
• More on minimum lot size reform in our interview with M. Nolan Gray.
• A blog post questioning whether new market-rate housing actually “creates” demand for low-income housing.
• Los Angeles Affordable Housing Linkage Fee nexus study.

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.

“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 from the success of minimum lot size reform in Houston, and a prescription for land use reform more generally. Houston’s reform, which took place in 1998, reduced the minimum parcel size for new homes from 5,000 to just 1,400 square feet per unit, and it’s produced tens of thousands of low-cost townhome-style houses in the city’s “inner loop.” It also allowed individual neighborhoods to opt-out of the reform, creating a political context in which reform could move forward. Gray, a doctoral student at UCLA and author of the new book, Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It, joins us to talk about the lessons we can learn from the famously unzoned city of Houston, and the promise that minimum lot size reform holds for improving affordability and giving residents more choice in how they live their lives.

Show notes:

• Gray, M. N., & Millsap, A. A. (2020). Subdividing the unzoned city: an analysis of the causes and effects of Houston’s 1998 subdivision reform. Journal of Planning Education and Research.
• Gray, M. N. (2022). Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It. Island Press.
• Gray, M. N., & Furth, S. (2019). Do minimum-lot-size regulations limit housing supply in Texas? Mercatus Research Paper.
• Glaeser, E. L., & Gyourko, J. (2002). The impact of zoning on housing affordability. National Bureau of Economic Research working paper.
• Monkkonen, P., & Manville, M. (2020). Planning knowledge and the regulatory hydra. Journal of the American Planning Association, 86(2), 268-269.
• Siegan, B. (2020). Land Use without Zoning. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
• On Minneapolis’s triplex zoning reform: Hamilton, E. (2022). Want More Housing? Ending Single-Family Zoning Won’t Do It. Bloomberg CityLab.
• On California’s ADU reform history: Casey, D. (2021). A Guide to Ending Single-Family Zoning: Lessons Learned from 39 Years of ADU Legislation. California Renters Legal Adovcacy and Education Fund.
• Hertz, D. (2015). The immaculate conception theory of your neighborhood’s origins. City Observatory.
• More about housing in Houston: Kinder Institute for Urban Research.
• UCLA Housing Voice Episode 10: Upzoning and Single-Family Housing Prices with Daniel Kuhlmann.