This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, December 6, 2022. I'm Caleb Brown.

For American Workers, Housing is an increasing inconvenience, either through the direct

cost of housing or, if not cost, distance from the office.

Vanessa Brown Calder is author of the Housing Chapter in the Cato Institute's New Empowering

the New American Worker Book, we spoke last month. I hate to always go back to

my home state of Kentucky but it's the one I pay the most attention to and we have a

governor who is more than happy to make these very big job

announcements. We have we have this number of jobs coming here this number of

jobs coming here. We're so happy to have these new

workers being productive in Kentucky with these new facilities that are opening up and yet the big question remains, well where are these people

going to live?

And so for workers who want to be productive, who want to save more, who want their housing to be a relatively smaller fraction of their income and want to live a convenient distance from the places that they work?

What's the state of affairs with regard to housing?

Well, Caleb, it's not great, I'm sorry to say. You know, I drafted this chapter for the

worker empowerment book, which is what we are talking about today months ago and

housing affordability was in a very poor state at the time and

sad to say it hasn't changed much in that

eight or nine months later.

Of course, there's been a series of interest rate hikes

since I drafted this, but home sales actually fell

in October.

High mortgage rates have pushed buyers out of the market.

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