When a city proposes zoning changes, how do you know whether they’ll be effective? Aaron Barrall shares how we approached the problem in Los Angeles, with lessons for similar upzoning efforts around the world. This is the second episode in a two-part conversation.

Show notes:

• Barrall, A., & Phillips, S. (2024). CHIPing In: Evaluating the effects of LA’s Citywide Housing Incentive Program on neighborhood development potential. UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies.
• YouTube recording of Aaron’s and Shane’s presentation at UCLA on the report’s findings.
• Wikipedia article about the États-Unis neighborhood in Lyon, France.
• Episode 20 of UCLA Housing Voice: French Social Housing and the SRU Law with Magda Maaoui.
• Monkkonen, P., Carlton, I., & Macfarlane, K. (2020). One to Four: The market potential of fourplexes in California’s single-family neighborhoods. UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies.
• Gabriel, S., & Kung, E. (2024). Development Approval Timelines, Approval Uncertainty, and New Housing Supply: Evidence from Los Angeles. SSRN.
• Manville, M., Monkkonen, P., Gray, N., & Phillips, S. (2023). Does discretion delay development? The impact of approval pathways on multifamily housing’s time to permit. Journal of the American Planning Association, 89(3), 336-347.
• Hilgard Analytics 2024 update on City of Los Angeles housing permitting.
• Dillon, L. (Nov 18 2024). Los Angeles rezoning plan won’t spur enough new housing, report finds. Los Angeles Times.
• Summary of California Senate Bill 79 (2025).
• Information on California Assembly Bill 647 (2025).
• Barrall, A., & Monkkonen, P. (2024). The Fair Housing Land Use Score in California: An Evaluation of 199 Municipal Plans. UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies.

When a city proposes zoning changes, how do you know whether they’ll be effective? Aaron Barrall shares how we approached the problem in Los Angeles, with lessons for similar upzoning efforts around the world. This is the first episode in a two-part conversation.

Show notes:

• Barrall, A., & Phillips, S. (2024). CHIPing In: Evaluating the effects of LA’s Citywide Housing Incentive Program on neighborhood development potential. UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies.
• YouTube recording of Aaron’s and Shane’s presentation at UCLA on the report’s findings.
• Monkkonen, P., Manville, M., Lens, M., Barrall, A., & Arena, O. (2023). California’s Strengthened Housing Element Law: Early Evidence on Higher Housing Targets and Rezoning. Cityscape, 25(2), 119-142.
• Elmendorf, C. S., Biber, E., Monkkonen, P., & O’Neill, M. (2020). Making It Work: Legal Foundations for Administrative Reform of California’s Housing Framework. Ecology Law Quarterly, 47(4), 973-1060.
• Episode 59 of UCLA Housing Voice: The Costs of Discretion with Paavo Monkkonen and Mike Manville.
• Episode 79 of UCLA Housing Voice: Who Pays For Inclusionary Zoning with Shane Phillips.

Helping people move to higher-opportunity neighborhoods requires knowing which neighborhoods are actually better. Are we any good at it? Dionissi Aliprantis shares his research on measuring neighborhood opportunity and the rent assistance program features that could meaningfully reduce racial segregation.

Show notes:

• Aliprantis, D., Martin, H., & Tauber, K. (2024). What determines the success of housing mobility programs? Journal of Housing Economics, 65, 102009.
• 99% Invisible episode on chambre le bonne (maid’s rooms) in Paris.
• Episode 87 of UCLA Housing Voice, on housing voucher lease-up rates with Sarah Strochak.
• Episode 17 of UCLA Housing Voice, on using fair market rents to improve housing vouchers with Rob Collinson.
• Episode 58 of UCLA Housing Voice, on the health impacts of Baltimore’s housing mobility program with Craig Pollack.
• The book, Waiting for Gautreaux: A Story of Segregation, Housing, and the Black Ghetto, by Alexander Polikoff.
• Chetty, R., Friedman, J. N., Hendren, N., Jones, M. R., & Porter, S. R. (2018). The Opportunity Atlas: Mapping the childhood roots of social mobility (No. w25147). National Bureau of Economic Research.
• Bergman, P., Chetty, R., DeLuca, S., Hendren, N., Katz, L. F., & Palmer, C. (2024). Creating Moves to Opportunity: Experimental evidence on barriers to neighborhood choice. American Economic Review, 114(5), 1281-1337.

Housing Choice vouchers help lower-income tenants pay rent, yet only about 60% of issued vouchers result in a successful lease-up. Sarah Strochak joins to share how lease-up rates vary for different groups and markets, and how reforming voucher policies could improve the lease-up process and get more people into affordable homes.

Show notes:

• Ellen, I. G., O’Regan, K., & Strochak, S. (2024). Race, Space, and Take Up: Explaining housing voucher lease-up rates. Journal of Housing Economics, 63, 101980.
• Episode 17 of UCLA Housing Voice, on Housing Choice Vouchers and small area rents with Rob Collinson.
• Episode 64 of UCLA Housing Voice, on vouchers as a homelessness solution with Beth Shinn (originally aired as episode 21).
• Episode 29 of UCLA Housing Voice, on how landlords make leasing and eviction decisions with Philip Garboden and Eva Rosen.
• LA Times article about the Housing Rights Initiative lawsuit alleging landlords violated source-of-income discrimination laws in California.

How have conditions changed since 1970 in neighborhoods where Black residents are the largest racial or ethnic group? Mike Lens wrote a whole book on the subject: Where the Hood At? Fifty Years of Change in Black Neighborhoods. He takes the guest mic to share what he learned.

Book summary: Substantial gaps exist between Black Americans and other racial and ethnic groups in the U.S., most glaringly Whites, across virtually all quality-of-life indicators. Despite strong evidence that neighborhood residence affects life outcomes, we lack a comprehensive picture of Black neighborhood conditions and how they have changed over time. In Where the Hood At? urban planning and public policy scholar Michael C. Lens examines the characteristics and trajectories of Black neighborhoods across the U.S. over the fifty years since the Fair Housing Act.

Show notes:

• Lens, M. C. (2024). Where the Hood At? Fifty Years of Change in Black Neighborhoods. Russell Sage Foundation.
• Website for Lisa Belkin’s book about public housing integration in Yonkers, NY, Show Me a Hero.
• IMDb page for the Show Me a Hero tv miniseries on HBO.
• Million Dollar Hoods website.
• Episode 52 of UCLA Housing Voice: Community Land Trusts with Annette Kim.
• Episode 40 of UCLA Housing Voice: Valuing Black Lives and Housing with Andre Perry.

On January 7th, the Palisades and Eaton fires erupted in Los Angeles, killing dozens of people, displacing tens of thousands, and destroying more than 15,000 structures. What will this mean for housing affordability in the already-strained region? Hannah Hennighausen joins to share her research on the 2018 Camp Fire's effect on housing prices and migration, and its lessons for LA and other cities threatened by natural disasters.

Show notes:

• Hennighausen, H., & James, A. (2024). Catastrophic fires, human displacement, and real estate prices in California. Journal of Housing Economics, 66, 102023.
• Shane's white paper, "The Palisades and Eaton Fires: Neighborhood Data and Potential Housing Market Effects."
• Episode 85 of This American Life, “When the Beasts Come Marching In.”
• CAL FIRE fire hazard severity zone viewer (interactive map).
• 99% Invisible’s “Not Built For This” podcast episode on the Camp Fire’s ripple effect beyond the fire’s perimeter.
• Reporting from local journalist Alissa Walker on volunteers identifying cases of rent-gouging following the LA fires.

Rent control is one of the most hotly debated housing policies, and also one of the most researched. Konstantin Kholodilin reviewed over 200 rent control studies, dating back decades and spanning six continents, and he joins us to give an overview of their results.

Show notes:

• Kholodilin, K. A. (2024). Rent control effects through the lens of empirical research: An almost complete review of the literature. Journal of Housing Economics, 101983.
• Konstantin’s massive database of rent control policies across the world: Longitudinal database of rental housing market regulations: 100+ countries over 100+ years.
• Kholodilin, K. (2020). Long-term, multicountry perspective on rental market regulations. Housing Policy Debate, 30(6), 994-1015.
• Wikipedia article on ‘kommunalka’ (communal apartment).
• Fogelson, R. M. (2013). The Great Rent Wars: New York, 1917-1929. Yale University Press.
• Episode 36 of UCLA Housing Voice on rent control in India with Sahil Gandhi and Richard Green.
• Willis, J. W. (1948). State rent-control legislation, 1946-1947. The Yale Law Journal, 57(3), 351-376.

In most of the U.S., cities are for singles, roommates, and childless couples, and the suburbs are for raising kids. That’s not true of much of the rest of the world, and perhaps the nearest example of family-friendly urbanism can be found just a few miles to the north, in Vancouver, British Columbia. Vancouver’s under-15 population fell by one percent citywide between 1996 and 2016, but in downtown specifically, its youth population nearly tripled. Louis Thomas, lecturer at Georgetown University and a parent himself, joins us this week to discuss the history, policies, and social infrastructure that have enabled this incredible shift, and how those lessons might translate to other cities and urban cores across North America.

Show notes:

• Thomas, L. L. (2021). Committed and “Won Over” Parents in Vancouver’s Dense Family-Oriented Urbanism. Journal of the American Planning Association, 87(2), 239-253.
• Karsten, L. (2015). Middle-class childhood and parenting culture in high-rise Hong Kong: On scheduled lives, the school trap and a new urban idyll. Children’s Geographies, 13(5), 556-570.
• Karsten, L. (2015). Middle-class households with children on vertical family living in Hong Kong. Habitat International, 47, 241-247.
• Yuen, B., Yeh, A., Appold, S. J., Earl, G., Ting, J., & Kurnianingrum Kwee, L. (2006). High-rise living in Singapore public housing. Urban Studies, 43(3), 583-600.
• Thomas, L. L. (2020). From childless tower to child-full density: families and the evolution of vancouverism. Planning Perspectives, 1-23.
• Ley, D. (1980). Liberal ideology and the postindustrial city. Annals of the Association of American geographers, 70(2), 238-258.
• City of Vancouver Planning Department. (1978). Housing Families at High Densities.
• Fishman, R. (2008). Bourgeois utopias: The rise and fall of suburbia. Basic books.

Urban upzonings have been rare across the world, and many of the most significant occurred only in the past 5–10 years or less. One exception is the canton of Zurich, Switzerland, where cities and towns have been relaxing land use restrictions for over 25 years. Simon Büchler and Elena Lutz share their research on the long-term effects of these reforms on housing supply and rents, and the kinds of zoning changes that produce real-world results.

Show notes:

• Büchler, S., & Lutz, E. (2024). Making housing affordable? The local effects of relaxing land-use regulation. Journal of Urban Economics, 143, 103689.
• Anagol, S., Ferreira, F. V., & Rexer, J. M. (2021). Estimating the economic value of zoning reform (No. w29440). National Bureau of Economic Research.
• Greenaway-McGrevy, R. (2023). Can zoning reform reduce housing costs? Evidence from rents in Auckland. Economic Policy Centre. 
• Asquith, B. J., Mast, E., & Reed, D. (2023). Local effects of large new apartment buildings in low-income areas. Review of Economics and Statistics, 105(2), 359-375.
• Gyourko, J., Mayer, C., & Sinai, T. (2013). Superstar Cities. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 5(4), 167-199.
• Mast, E. (2024). Warding off development: Local control, housing supply, and nimbys. Review of Economics and Statistics, 106(3), 671-680.
• Mast, E. (2023). JUE Insight: The effect of new market-rate housing construction on the low-income housing market. Journal of Urban Economics, 133, 103383.
• Bratu, C., Harjunen, O., & Saarimaa, T. (2023). JUE Insight: City-wide effects of new housing supply: Evidence from moving chains. Journal of Urban Economics, 133, 103528.