Housing Is a Problem Even in a State With Declining Population

Odd Lots

Bloomberg

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🗓️ 16 August 2025

⏱️ 56 minutes

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Summary

You can kind of understand why it's so hard to build housing in New York City. There isn't much available land. It's already pretty built up. And then, add in the fact that so many people want to live in New York, and you can understand why it's so expensive. But what's the deal with Alaska? There seems to be plenty of land. And population has actually been in a a general state of decline. And yet, housing remains strained, with many of the same affordability problems seen elsewhere in the country. So what are the specific challenging dynamics to be overcome? On this episode, we speak with Jimmy Ord, Daniel Delfino, and Stacy Barnes of the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation to understand the challenges they face, and the work they do to ease the strain. We get into both the specific logistical, political, and financial tools available to reduce pressure.

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1:07.0	Music News Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Joe Wisenthall.
1:23.0	And I'm Tracy Allaway.
1:24.2	So Tracy, I get why, like a city, like New York City, its housing is really expensive.
1:29.6	It's really difficult to build. I mean, there's not a lot of space, right, in New York City. Like, I don't really blame New York City for not building a lot of new housing. Like, where would you put it exactly? Right. Manhattan is an island. Seems somewhat limited. Plus it has a giant Park taking up a good chunk of it.
1:25.2	So there's that.
1:26.3	It seems Nimbis are keeping it so that we can't develop on us. Plus, it has a giant park taking up a good chunk of it, so there's that.
1:48.9	It seems Nimbis are keeping it so that we can't develop on a central park.
1:51.7	But yeah, like I sort of get why housing is really strained in New York City.
1:53.6	I don't blame anyone really for it. But it always seems like in the more rural locations, especially where there's not a lot of population growth, it should be really easy to, you know, just build more houses or, you know, use the houses that people left when they moved.
2:06.2	And yet, our impression is from past trips, et cetera, that there's a lot of strain on rural housing as well.
2:12.3	That's right. So we've done a few field trips to places like North Carolina.
2:16.2	And we learn that even in an area that
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