UCLA Housing Voice

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? And what happens if the government also provides quality, affordable housing along with secure tenure? Singumbe Muyeba joins us to share the results of his research on a slum upgrading program in Nairobi, Kenya.

Show notes:

• Muyeba, S. (2023). Property rights and health for the urban housing poor in Nairobi: Evidence from a phased-in natural experiment. Journal of Urban Affairs, 45(3), 590-615.
• Bah, E. H. M., Faye, I., Geh, Z. F., Bah, E. H. M., Faye, I., & Geh, Z. F. (2018). The housing sector in Africa: Setting the scene. Housing Market Dynamics in Africa, 1-21.
• Vogl, T. S. (2007). Urban land rights and child nutritional status in Peru, 2004. Economics & Human Biology, 5(2), 302-321.
• Galiani, S., & Schargrodsky, E. (2004). Effects of land titling on child health. Economics & Human Biology, 2(3), 353-372.
• Galiani, S., & Schargrodsky, E. (2010). Property rights for the poor: Effects of land titling. Journal of Public Economics, 94(9-10), 700-729.
• Monkkonen, P. (2012). The demand for land regularisation: Theory and evidence from Tijuana, Mexico. Urban Studies, 49(2), 271-288.
• Monkkonen, P. (2016). Where do property rights matter more? Explaining the variation in demand for property titles across cities in Mexico. World development, 88, 67-78.
• Episode 32 of UCLA Housing Voice with Diego Gil on Chile’s “Enabling Markets” policy, which the World Bank and others advocated for other developing countries.

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 about the (surprisingly short) history of condo ownership, the unintended consequences of condo restrictions, and the way other policies like HOA governance and rent control influence the popularity of owner-occupied multifamily housing.

Show notes:

• Boustan, L., Margo, R. A., Miller, M. M., Reeves, J., & Steil, J. (2023). JUE Insight: Condominium development does not lead to gentrification. Journal of Urban Economics, 133, 103524.
• 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), 3365-3394.
• Fetter, D. K. (2016). The Home Front: The Home Front: Rent Control and the Rapid Wartime Increase in Home Ownership. The Journal of Economic History, 76(4), 1001-1043.

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 those changes. What are the keys to successful accessory dwelling unit and second unit housing policy, and how do we find the right balance between local control and the intervention of state legislatures?

Show notes:

• Mukhija, V. (2022). Remaking the American Dream: The Informal and Formal Transformation of Single-Family Housing Cities. MIT Press.
• The Los Angeles Times You Do ADU Newsletter.
• Floor plan of Lennar’s “Home Within a Home” new-build housing with interior second unit.
• A history of state ADU reform in California: Casey, D. (2021). A Guide to Ending Single-Family Zoning: Lessons Learned from 39 Years of ADU Legislation. California Renters Legal Advocacy and Education Fund.
• Furth, S., and Remington, J. (2021, April 27). Ordinances at Work: Seven Communities That Welcome Accessory Dwelling Units. Mercatus Center.
• AARP. (2021). Accessory Dwelling Units Model State Act and Local Ordinance.
• Another resource on ADUs: AccessoryDwellings.org.
• Peterson, K. (2018). Backdoor Revolution: The Definitive Guide to ADU Development. Accessory Dwelling Strategies, LLC.
• Crane, R. E. (2020). Is Granny in that Flat? How Regulations Shape the Construction and Use of Accessory Dwelling Units in Los Angeles. University of California, Los Angeles. 
• Marantz, N., Elmendorf, C., & Kim, Y. B. (2023). Evaluating California’s Accessory Dwelling Unit Reforms: Preliminary Evidence and Lessons for State Governments. NYU Furman Center.
• Durning, A. (2020, February 21). One of North America’s Boldest Housing Initiatives Has Reached Its End: Did It Work? Sightline Institute.

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 talk about his new book, Remaking the American Dream, and how informal and incremental housing is reshaping single-family neighborhoods. This is part one of a two-part series; in part two we’ll get into the weeds on accessory dwelling units (aka backyard cottages, granny flats, etc.) and debate the merits of state intervention in local housing policy.

Show notes:

• Mukhija, V. (2022). Remaking the American Dream: The Informal and Formal Transformation of Single-Family Housing Cities. MIT Press.
• Background on the City of Los Angeles’ Unpermitted Dwelling Unit Ordinance.
• More info on the LA-Más ADU pilot program with LA County.
• Mukhija, V. (2017). Squatters as Developers? Slum Redevelopment in Mumbai. Routledge.

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 problem, community land trusts as a strategy for solving it, and the benefits and obstacles to scaling them up.

Show notes:

• Kim, A. M., & Eisenlohr, A. (2022). Community Land Trusts for Sustainably Affordable Rental Housing Redevelopment. Cityscape, 24(1), 233-256.
• Kim, A. M. (2015). Sidewalk City: Remapping Public Space in Ho Chi Minh City. University of Chicago Press.
• Episode 41 on shared-equity homeownership with William Cheung and Kelvin Wong.
• Feasibility analysis for increasing affordability covenant duration to 99 years in City of Los Angeles.
• From the Lewis Center: Phillips, S. (2020). Increasing the Duration of Affordability Requirements for New Affordable Housing.
• Reyes, E. A., & Menezes, R. (Mar 7, 2014). L.A. and Orange counties are an epicenter of overcrowded housing. Los Angeles Times.

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 eviction types in Southern California — court-based “at-fault” evictions and administrative “no-fault” evictions — including the different motivations behind them, where they’re distributed, and how we might prevent them.

Show notes:

• 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.
• Lens, M. C., Nelson, K., Gromis, A., & Kuai, Y. (2020). The neighborhood context of eviction in Southern California. City & Community, 19(4), 912-932.
• Episode 47 with Hyojung Lee on gentrification and displacement.
• Syphilis Explosion billboards!

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 citizens, EU citizens living in Spain, and non-EU citizens and how citizenship status influences housing precarity and displacement outcomes.

Show notes:

• Delclós, C. (2022). The burden of the border: Precarious citizenship experiences in the wake of the Spanish housing crash. European Urban and Regional Studies.
• Ealham, C. (2010). Anarchism and the City: Revolution and Counter-revolution in Barcelona, 1898–1937. AK Press.https://doi.org/10.1177/09697764221136092
• Interactive FRED graph of real residential property prices for select countries, including Spain.
• Gonick, S. L. (2021). Dispossession and Dissent: Immigrants and the Struggle for Housing in Madrid. Stanford University Press.
• Clair, A., Reeves, A., McKee, M., & Stuckler, D. (2019). Constructing a housing precariousness measure for Europe. Journal of European Social Policy, 29(1), 13-28.
• Kain, J. F., & Quigley, J. M. (1972). Housing market discrimination, home-ownership, and savings behavior. The American Economic Review, 62(3), 263-277.
• Taylor, K. Y. (2019). Race for Profit: How banks and the real estate industry undermined black homeownership. UNC Press Books.
• Yiftachel, O. (2020). From displacement to displaceability: A southeastern perspective on the new metropolis. City, 24(1-2), 151-165.
• Caroz-Armayones, J. M., Benach, J., Delclós, C., & Julià, M. (2022). The double burden of precariousness: linking housing, employment, and perceived stress–a cross-sectional study. International Journal of Environmental Health Research, 1-10.
• Housing Voice ep. 49 with Sorcha Edwards, on sustaining and growing Europe’s social housing.

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 of Housing Europe, joins us to share their efforts to expand the footprint of non-profit and limited-profit housing across the continent — maintaining established programs like those in Austria and Finland, and growing them in places like Spain, where only about 1% of housing units are rented social housing. We also discuss the International Social Housing Festival, happening this year in Barcelona on June 7-9, and the lessons and inspiration that can be drawn from practitioners around the globe.

Show notes:

• Report: The State of Housing in Europe, 2021. Housing Europe.
• More about Matongé, Brussels: Matonge, an African home in Brussels.
• Website for the International Social Housing Festival, in Barcelona June 7-9, 2023.
• Website for the Het Schip Social Housing Museum.
• O’Sullivan, F. (July 16 2020). To Fill Vacant Units, Barcelona Seizes Apartments. Bloomberg.
• Phillips, S. (April 18 2023). To improve housing affordability, Spain needs more rental housing. International Social Housing Festival blog post.

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 remain in the workforce longer than planned, or even come out of retirement and return to work. But housing wealth is different from a stock portfolio or other assets, and previous research has failed to establish clear links between rising or falling home values and retirement decisions. Jaclene Begley joins us to discuss new research that establishes a connection, but with surprising nuances. We discuss what makes housing wealth unique, and the ways it affects work and retirement decisions differently for men than women, when home values rise rather than fall, and when housing wealth declines a little rather than a lot. We also step back and talk about the broader consequences of relying on housing as most households' primary source of wealth and retirement nest egg.

Show notes:

• Begley, J., & Chan, S. (2018). The effect of housing wealth shocks on work and retirement decisions. Regional Science and Urban Economics, 73, 180-195.
• Quigley, J. M., & Raphael, S. (2004). Is housing unaffordable? Why isn't it more affordable? Journal of Economic Perspectives, 18(1), 191-214.

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 U.S., which may overlook local or regional differences. Hyojung Lee joins us to discuss his new study with coauthor Kristin Perkins which categorizes the country into eight unique geographies according to shared characteristics, searching for differences in how gentrification impacts displacement of low-income households. It persuasively finds that gentrification does lead to more household moves — and importantly, more downward moves — and can hopefully inform further research and more location-appropriate anti-displacement strategies.

Show notes:

• Lee, H., & Perkins, K. L. (2022). The geography of gentrification and residential mobility. Social Forces, soac086.
• Read more about the Cheonggyecheon freeway removal here.
• Freeman, L., & Braconi, F. (2004). Gentrification and displacement New York City in the 1990s. Journal of the American Planning Association, 70(1), 39-52.
• Ellen, I. G., & O'Regan, K. (2011). Gentrification: Perspectives of economists and planners. The Oxford Handbook of Urban Economics and Planning, 371–391.
• Hwang, J., & Ding, L. (2020). Unequal displacement: gentrification, racial stratification, and residential destinations in Philadelphia. American Journal of Sociology, 126(2), 354-406.
• UCLA Housing Voice podcast episode 7 with Kristin Perkins.
• UCLA Housing Voice podcast episode 12 with Elizabeth Delmelle.