UCLA Housing Voice
76 episodes - English - Latest episode: 10 days ago - ★★★★★ - 83 ratingsWhy does the housing market seem so broken? And what can we do about it? UCLA Housing Voice tackles these questions in conversation with leading housing researchers, with each episode centered on a study and its implications for creating more affordable and accessible communities.
Homepage Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Episodes
Ep 70: Overcoming Resistance to Density with David Kaufmann and Michael Wicki
April 17, 2024 10:00 - 1 hour - 49.2 MBWhat makes people more or less supportive of dense housing in their communities? David Kaufmann and Michael Wicki surveyed 12,000 residents in six of the largest U.S. and European cities to find out.
Ep 69: Low-Income Housing and 'Crowd Out' with Michael Eriksen
April 03, 2024 10:00 - 57 minutes - 39.4 MBSubsidized affordable housing development reduces costs for lower-income households directly. It also reduces costs indirectly, by increasing the overall supply of housing — or does it? Michael Eriksen joins to discuss the issue of “crowd out” in affordable housing production.
Ep 68: Summarizing the Research on Homelessness with Janey Rountree (Pathways Home pt. 8)
March 06, 2024 11:00 - 1 hour - 47 MBIn this final installment of the Pathways Home series on homelessness policy and research, we discuss lessons and key takeaways from the previous seven episodes with our UCLA colleague, Janey Rountree.
Ep 67: How We Cut Veteran Homelessness By Half with Monica Diaz and Shawn Liu (Pathways Home pt. 7)
February 21, 2024 11:00 - 1 hour - 43.6 MBSince 2009, homelessness among U.S. veterans has fallen by more than half. Among the overall population, it hasn’t budged. Monica Diaz and Shawn Liu of the Department of Veterans Affairs share some of the story behind the VA's success.
Ep 66: Chronic Homelessness and Housing First with Tim Aubry (Pathways Home pt. 6)
February 07, 2024 11:00 - 1 hour - 48.8 MBThe Housing First approach starts with providing homes to chronically unhoused people, but it doesn’t stop there — and that’s what makes it so effective. Tim Aubry shares findings from a major Housing First study and the keys to a successful program.
Ep 65: Reducing Homelessness with Unconditional Cash Transfers with Jiaying Zhao (Pathways Home pt. 5)
January 24, 2024 11:00 - 1 hour - 42.1 MBWhat happens when you provide unhoused people with a large sum of money? Jiaying Zhao shares the results of a study in Vancouver, BC, which include reduced shelter use, more spending on food and rent, and no increase in spending on “temptation goods” like drugs and alcohol.
Ep. 64: Ending Family Homelessness with Beth Shinn (Pathways Home pt. 4)
January 10, 2024 11:00 - 56 minutes - 38.6 MB“We have the resources, as a society, to prevent and end homelessness. And the knowledge.” Beth Shinn discusses the Family Options Study, which found that long-term housing subsidies, like housing vouchers, led to much better outcomes at similar cost compared to rapid rehousing, transitional housing, and “usual care.”
Ep. 63: Understanding Vehicular Homelessness with Madeline Brozen (Pathways Home pt. 3)
December 27, 2023 11:00 - 1 hour - 42.9 MBIn Los Angeles County, unhoused people living in cars, trucks, and RVs outnumber those in tents and makeshift shelters by 50%, yet vehicular homelessness receives relatively little attention. Many cities don’t even measure or report on it — at least not yet. The Lewis Center’s Madeline Brozen joins to discuss her research on the distinct demographics and experiences of unhoused people living out of their vehicles, and the promise of safe parking programs to support the transition back into s...
Ep 62: Who Experiences Homelessness, and Why with Margot Kushel (Pathways Home pt. 2)
December 13, 2023 14:00 - 1 hour - 48.8 MBMany people think they know about the lives of people experiencing homelessness, but those perceptions are often based on anecdote. Margot Kushel, MD joins us to talk about her work on the largest representative study of homelessness since the 1990s, and what it says about who experiences homelessness, why they become homeless, their experiences while living without housing, and barriers to re-entering stable housing.
Ep 61: Homelessness is a Housing Problem with Gregg Colburn (Pathways Home pt.1)
November 29, 2023 11:00 - 1 hour - 45.9 MBPart one of Pathways Home, a six-part series on homelessness. Gregg Colburn, author of Homelessness is a Housing Problem, dispels myths about the causes of homelessness and identifies two key risk factors that explain why rates vary so much between cities: high rents and low vacancies.
Encore Episdoe: Fair Housing with Katherine O’Regan
November 15, 2023 11:00 - 1 hour - 43.3 MBThe federal government passed the Fair Housing Act more than 50 years ago. In that time considerable progress has been made at reducing discrimination in the housing market, but the law’s mandate to “affirmatively further fair housing” and reverse patterns of segregation has been only lightly enforced. Katherine O’Regan of NYU, and formerly of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, joins Mike and Shane to talk about the legacy of the Fair Housing Act, the changing nature of neig...
Encore Episode: Fair Housing with Katherine O’Regan
November 15, 2023 11:00 - 1 hour - 43.3 MBThe federal government passed the Fair Housing Act more than 50 years ago. In that time considerable progress has been made at reducing discrimination in the housing market, but the law’s mandate to “affirmatively further fair housing” and reverse patterns of segregation has been only lightly enforced. Katherine O’Regan of NYU, and formerly of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, joins Mike and Shane to talk about the legacy of the Fair Housing Act, the changing nature of neig...
Ep 60: Housing Production and Rent Assistance Savings with Kevin Corinth
November 01, 2023 13:00 - 1 hour - 46.6 MBHousing scarcity is linked to higher rents and house prices, but it’s rarely connected to the cost and reach of safety net programs — and it should be. Kevin Corinth joins to share his research on how increasing housing production in supply-constrained cities can help the government serve many more households with rent assistance.
Ep 59: The Costs of Discretion with Paavo Monkkonen and Mike Manville
October 18, 2023 10:00 - 1 hour - 48.9 MBDoes discretion delay development, or do deliberate decisions divert disaster? Paavo and Mike M. share new Lewis Center research comparing approval timelines for discretionary and by-right projects, and they discuss the consequences of slow and uncertain approval processes for housing production, affordability, and public trust.
Ep 58: Housing Choice and Public Health with Craig Pollack, MD
September 06, 2023 10:00 - 58 minutes - 40.4 MBHow does the neighborhood you live in affect your health? Craig Pollack, MD, joins to discuss the relationship between neighborhood poverty and asthma symptoms, the medical establishment’s growing role in the housing sector, and how better housing policy can lead to improved public health.
Ep 57: Origins of the Mortgage Market (and Federal Bailouts) with Judge Glock
August 23, 2023 10:00 - 1 hour - 53.8 MBThe modern mortgage: fixed-rate, low interest, 30-year term, 80% loan-to-value, amortizing. It wouldn’t exist without the backing of the federal government, but how and why was it created? And what were the consequences for the housing market and broader economy? Judge Glock joins us to share the surprising history of the modern home mortgage, the strange bedfellows who fought for its creation, and its relationship to a century of bank bailouts.
Ep 56: Property Rights and Public Health in Nairobi, Kenya with Singumbe Muyeba
August 09, 2023 10:00 - 58 minutes - 39.9 MBStudies 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.
Ep 55: Condos Don't Cause Gentrification with Leah Boustan and Robert Margo
July 26, 2023 10:00 - 49 minutes - 34.3 MBCondos 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 ho...
Ep 54: Accessory Dwelling Units and State vs. Local Control with Vinit Mukhija (pt. 2)
July 12, 2023 10:00 - 1 hour - 53.7 MBIn 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?
Ep 53: Informal Housing and Remaking Single-Family Neighborhoods with Vinit Mukhija (pt. 1)
June 28, 2023 13:00 - 1 hour - 49.5 MBDoes 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 flat...
Episode 52: Community Land Trusts with Annette Kim
June 14, 2023 13:00 - 53 minutes - 36.6 MBWe 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.
Ep 52: Community Land Trusts with Annette Kim
June 14, 2023 13:00 - 53 minutes - 36.6 MBWe 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.
Ep 51: The Geography of Eviction with Kyle Nelson
June 01, 2023 18:00 - 1 hour - 46.7 MBWhere 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 t...
Ep 50: Immigration and Housing Precarity with Carlos Delclós
May 17, 2023 10:00 - 1 hour - 42.6 MBIn 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.
Ep 49: Sustaining and Growing Europe’s Social Housing with Sorcha Edwards
May 03, 2023 10:00 - 52 minutes - 35.9 MBIt’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...
Ep 48: Housing Wealth and Retirement with Jaclene Begley
April 19, 2023 10:00 - 53 minutes - 36.7 MBHousing 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 ...
Ep 47: Geographies of Gentrification with Hyojung Lee
April 05, 2023 10:00 - 1 hour - 50.1 MBDoes 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 sh...
Ep 46: Manufactured Housing (aka Mobile Homes) with Esther Sullivan
March 22, 2023 10:00 - 1 hour - 50.2 MBManufactured housing is the largest source of unsubsidized affordable housing in the U.S., and one of the only ways that low-income households are able to access homeownership. Due to a mix of public policies and social stigma, these homes are often found in manufactured housing communities, colloquially known as mobile home parks or trailer parks — and in recent years, these communities have increasingly been under threat by predatory investors or by closures, whether for redevelopment or o...
Ep 45: What Happened When Auckland Upzoned Everywhere with Ryan Greenaway-McGrevy
March 08, 2023 11:00 - 1 hour - 51.3 MBIn 2016, Auckland, New Zealand did something nearly unprecedented in the English-speaking world: It upzoned the majority of land in the city, and not just for three or four units per parcel. They went much further than that, and by one estimate increased the legal capacity for housing in the city by 300%. The goal of the reform, known as the Auckland Unitary Plan, was to increase production of multifamily housing and slow or stop rapidly rising housing prices. Did they succeed? Ryan Greenawa...
Ep 44: HOPE VI Public Housing Redevelopment with Rebekah Levine Coley
February 22, 2023 14:00 - 1 hour - 43.4 MBHOPE VI was a federal program running from 1993–2010 that sought to redevelop distressed, poor, racially segregated public housing into mixed-income communities. In that time it helped build nearly 100,000 new homes for people of varying incomes, and with the involvement of both the public and private sectors. Its goal was to reduce concentrated poverty and racial segregation; so how did it do? Rebekah Levine Coley joins us to share her research into the impacts of HOPE VI redevelopment on n...
Ep 43: Reexamining Redlining with Todd Michney
February 08, 2023 11:00 - 1 hour - 49.6 MBIn recent years, the story of residential segregation and discrimination — and especially the practice of redlining — has gained well-deserved prominence in U.S. housing discourse. Equally important, the federal government has been directly implicated in the development and institutionalization of redlining and similar practices. A key early player in this history is the Home Owners Loan Corporation, or HOLC, which commissioned the infamous “residential security” maps that separated resident...
Ep 42: Vienna’s ‘Remarkably Stable’ Social Housing with Justin Kadi
January 25, 2023 11:00 - 1 hour - 52.5 MBSocial housing — housing built for limited or no profit, often with government support — came to account for huge portions of the housing market in many Western European countries following World War II, but its prominence has declined since the 1980s, when many governments began to shift their housing investments away from construction and toward direct financial support for renters. This shift is arguably one cause of the housing affordability crisis many cities find themselves in today, b...
Episode 41: Shared-Equity Homeownership with William Cheung and Kelvin Wong
January 11, 2023 14:00 - 54 minutes - 37.2 MBShared-equity homeownership programs help low- and moderate-income people afford buying a home, but they come with a catch. In exchange for help with your loan or a discount on your purchase, you need to pay back the government when you sell. That leaves them with less money to buy their next home, so many who participate in shared-equity programs end up stuck in place or back on the rental market. As William Cheung and Kelvin Wong put it, these programs provide great “entry affordability,” ...
Ep 41: Shared-Equity Homeownership with William Cheung and Kelvin Wong
January 11, 2023 14:00 - 54 minutes - 37.2 MBShared-equity homeownership programs help low- and moderate-income people afford buying a home, but they come with a catch. In exchange for help with your loan or a discount on your purchase, you need to pay back the government when you sell. That leaves them with less money to buy their next home, so many who participate in shared-equity programs end up stuck in place or back on the rental market. As William Cheung and Kelvin Wong put it, these programs provide great “entry affordability,” ...
Ep 40: Valuing Black Lives and Housing with Andre Perry
December 28, 2022 11:00 - 58 minutes - 39.9 MBAndre Perry has spent years researching majority-Black communities, and he’s reached a stark conclusion: “There’s nothing wrong with Black people that ending racism can’t solve.” His 2020 book, Know Your Price: Valuing Black lives and property in America’s Black cities, explores this idea and its ramifications for Black uplift, and more specifically the valuation of Black property. Why are homes in Black-owned neighborhoods undervalued and underappraised? What role can — or should — homeowne...
Ep 39: The Intertwined History of Class and Race Segregation in Housing with Laura Redford
December 14, 2022 11:00 - 57 minutes - 39.4 MBMuch has been written about the history of racial segregation in America’s housing market — and for good reason — but less is known about the role of class-based segregation. Using early 20th century Los Angeles as a case study, Laura Redford discusses how developers used a combination of restrictive covenants, the judicial system, and advertising to build a divided city — one that not only separated white residents from Black residents and other people of color, but also maintained division...
Ep 38: The Housing Supply-Migration-Income Relationship with Peter Ganong
November 30, 2022 11:00 - 1 hour - 44.2 MBPrior to 1980, per-capita income gaps between poor states and rich states were persistently shrinking, driven by the migration of lower-income, less skilled workers to higher-paying regions. Since then, this “regional income convergence” phenomenon has declined. What happened? As always, there’s a housing story to tell. Peter Ganong joins us to discuss his (and coauthor Daniel Shoag’s) research into the relationship between land use regulation, housing supply, household migration, and income...
Ep 37: Public Housing and Tenant Power in Atlanta with Akira Drake Rodriguez
November 02, 2022 10:00 - 1 hour - 44.5 MBIn this episode we do a deep dive into the history of Atlanta’s public housing program, from its inception in 1934 to the eventual demolition and redevelopment of many sites in the 1990s and onward. But Professor Akira Drake Rodriguez’s focus isn’t the public housing developments themselves. Rather, it’s on the tenants — overwhelming Black, and disproportionately women-led — who called public housing communities home, organized and built political power within them, and used that power to ma...
Ep 36: Rent Control in India with Sahil Gandhi and Richard Green
October 19, 2022 10:00 - 59 minutes - 40.9 MBUsually, 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...
Ep. 35: Landlord Regulation and Unintended Consequences with Meredith Greif
October 05, 2022 10:00 - 1 hour - 41.6 MBHow 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...
Ep 34: Right to Eviction Counsel with Ingrid Gould Ellen
September 21, 2022 13:00 - 50 minutes - 34.9 MBWhen 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 ...
Ep 33: Housing Transfer Taxes with Tuukka Saarimaa
September 07, 2022 10:00 - 57 minutes - 39.4 MBIn 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, F...
Ep 32: Chile’s “Enabling Markets” Policy with Diego Gil
August 24, 2022 13:00 - 1 hour - 43.6 MBStarting 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 with...
Ep 31: Inclusionary Zoning with Emily Hamilton
August 10, 2022 10:00 - 1 hour - 45.3 MBCities 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 ...
Ep 30: Skyscrapers with Gabriel Ahlfeldt
July 27, 2022 10:00 - 1 hour - 44 MBSkyscrapers! 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 o...
Ep 29: Landlords, Discrimination, and Eviction with Eva Rosen and Philip Garboden
July 13, 2022 10:00 - 1 hour - 45.1 MBLandlords 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...
Ep 28: Singapore's Public Housing with Chua Beng Huat
June 29, 2022 10:00 - 1 hour - 53.8 MB“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 f...
Ep 27: Minimum Lot Size Reform with M. Nolan Gray
June 15, 2022 10:00 - 1 hour - 51.1 MB“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 th...
Ep 26: The Future of Housing in California — and the Nation — with Dana Cuff and Carolina Reid
May 11, 2022 10:00 - 1 hour - 42.6 MBShane Phillips 0:04 Hello, this is the UCLA housing voice podcast. And I'm your host, Shane Phillips. Each episode we discuss a different housing research paper with its author to better understand how we can make our cities more affordable and more equitable places to live. Believe it or not, we have been putting together this podcast for a year now. And this is our final episode of season one. We'll be back in a month or so. But if you've enjoyed the show up to this point, we would real...
Ep 25: Housing Justice with Casey Dawkins
April 27, 2022 10:00 - 1 hour - 45.5 MBIs 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, regardles...