UCLA Housing Voice

“We are at a point in Los Angeles and California, where we are seeing the population plateau or even decline for the first time since the 18th century. That is not only a statistical change it is a shift in how we define ourselves and our civic identity.” So says Christopher Hawthorne, one of many housing experts interviewed for a recently report published by the California 100 initiative. What are we going to do about it? In this final episode of season one, Shane is joined by Dana Cuff of UCLA cityLAB and Carolina Reid of UC Berkeley’s Terner Center to talk about their new report (co-authored with the Lewis Center). It outlines the facts that define California’s housing crisis, the history that got us here, and a vision for a more affordable, inclusive, socially and environmentally just future. The report calls for increased homebuilding and a greater emphasis on housing’s role in promoting the public good, not just private gain. Without both, California will fall short of its aspirations, and the rest of the U.S. may follow it down a path to worsening affordability, rising housing instability and homelessness, and declining economic and environmental sustainability.

Show notes:

• Report with Policies and Future Scenarios: Phillips, S., Reid, C., Cuff, D., & Wong, K. (2022). The Future of Housing and Community Development: A California 100 Report on Policies and Future Scenarios. California 100 Initiative.
• Full report on Facts, Origins, and Trends: Phillips, S., Reid, C., Cuff, D., & Wong, K. (2022). The Future of Housing and Community Development: An In-Depth Analysis of the Facts, Origins and Trends of Housing and Community Development in California. California 100 Initiative.
• Roadmap and Summary of report (four pages).
• Visual representation of the four scenarios, created by cityLAB.
• A Terner Center report on the likely impacts of Senate Bill (SB) 9.
• Baldassare, M., Bonner, D., Dykman, A., & Lopes, L. (2018). Proposition 13: 40 Years Later. Public Policy Institute of California.
• Update: Project Homekey expanded in 2022.
• See more of the Terner Center’s work.
• See more of cityLAB’s work.

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 his new book, Just Housing. Dr. Dawkins traces the history of land and housing reformers across American history, and how our conceptions of housing justice have shifted over time. We talk about what it would mean for every household to enjoy housing security, regardless of whether they rent or own, and Dawkins poses the provocative argument that private property is not the cause of housing injustice, but the solution to it. We also discuss Dawkins’ proposal for a “negative income tax” and universal housing allowance that could address many of the current injustices and inequities in the housing market.

Show notes:

• Dawkins, C. J. (2021). Just housing: The moral foundations of American housing policy. MIT Press.
• History of the right to shelter in New York.
• Waldron, J. (2019). Homelessness and the Issue of Freedom. J. Const. L., 27.
• Goetz, E. G. (2019). Fair Housing Is About Choice, Not Integration: 50 Years of the Fair Housing Act. University of Minnesota Center for Urban & Regional Affairs. 
• Goetz, E. G. (2020). The One-Way Street of Integration: Fair Housing and the Pursuit of Racial Justice in American Cities. Cornell University Press.

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.

Do people drive less because they live in buildings that don’t provide parking, or do they live in buildings that don’t provide parking because they drive less? That question has huge implications for how we build and rebuild our cities, yet researchers have struggled for decades to answer it conclusively. UCLA professor Adam Millard-Ball joins us to discuss new research that finally — we hope — puts the question to bed. Taking advantage of San Francisco’s affordable housing lottery, Millard-Ball and colleagues find that (as-good-as-)randomly assigning tenants to different buildings and neighborhoods has substantial impacts on their transportation choices, with lower parking ratios resulting in less driving and more transit use. We talk about what this means for housing and parking policy, and what it says about the behavioral shifts needed to make cities more affordable, accessible, and sustainable.

Show notes:

• Millard-Ball, A., West, J., Rezaei, N., & Desai, G. (2022). What do residential lotteries show us about transportation choices?. Urban Studies, 59(2), 434-452.
• Free summary of article at Transfers Magazine.
• Chatman, D. G. (2013). Does TOD need the T? On the importance of factors other than rail access. Journal of the American Planning Association, 79(1), 17-31.
• On parking cash-out programs: Shoup, Don. (2017). Opinion: Here’s an easy way to fight L.A.'s traffic and boost transit ridership — reward commuters who don’t drive. Los Angeles Times.
• Blumenberg, E., & Pierce, G. (2017). The drive to work: The relationship between transportation access, housing assistance, and employment among participants in the welfare to work voucher program. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 37(1), 66-82.
• King, D. A., Smart, M. J., & Manville, M. (2019). The poverty of the carless: Toward universal auto access. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 0739456X18823252.

“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.