A new working paper by Mondragon & Wieland (2022) at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) suggests that the shift to remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic accounted for at least half of the price increases in housing nationwide.…
Report: Housing Justice is Essential for Reparations
California’s Reparations Task Force was established in 2021 to provide a policy framework for providing reparations for slavery to African-Americans. Their Interim Report, released in June 2022, covers significant aspects of housing opportunity and segregation, with proposals to begin redressing…
Barriers to Prosperity: How Housing Bans Harm California’s Middle-Income Households
Middle-income households in California face a critical dearth of housing options, increasingly squeezed by the rising costs of housing on the private market and limited resources from the public sector. A new study by Garcia et al. (2022) at the…
The State of Hispanic Homeownership
The National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals (NAHREP) recently released the 2021 edition of their annual report, “The State of Hispanic Homeownership.” This report highlights important disparities in access to wealth creation opportunities through homeownership for Hispanic Americans. Key…
Project Homekey: A Model for Addressing Homelessness?
California’s Project Homekey, a new initiative by Governor Newsom to acquire and retrofit hotels for permanent supportive housing, was hailed as a transformative solution to homelessness when it was launched in mid-2020. A new report by UC Berkeley’s Terner Center…
How Affordable Housing Makes Communities Wealthier
The Urban Institute has a new research brief out on the local economic benefits of affordable housing, focusing on a case study in Alexandria, VA. Key takeaways: New affordable housing projects in Alexandria increased home values within a one-block radius…
Do “Area Plans” Harm Affordability? The Case for City-Wide Upzonings
Shane Phillips at the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies analyses the relationship between land values and upzoning in a new essay, “Building Up the ‘Zoning Buffer’: Using Broad Upzones to Increase Housing Capacity Without Increasing Land Values.” Phillips…
How Apartment Bans Keep Americans in the Poor House
A new literature review by Federal Reserve staff economists Jia et al (2022) assesses the evidence from the economic costs of reduced migration. In particular, the review adds context to the findings of Hsieh & Moretti (2019) that restrictions on…
LA’s Apartment Bans Promote Segregation – and High Housing Costs
Single-Family Zoning in Greater Los Angeles, a new study by Menendian et al (2022) at UC Berkeley’s Othering and Belonging Institute, examines new evidence on the relationships between exclusionary zoning, household income, home value, educational attainment, educational performance, and environmental…
Back on track: how California can build transit projects faster – and cheaper
New public transit projects in the United States are constantly over-budget and behind schedule. How can state and local policymakers fix this? A new study by Elkind et al. (2022) at UC Berkeley examines five case studies. Key takeaways: Local…