Is Too Much Local Democracy to Blame for the Housing Crisis?

KQED's Forum

KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 16 September 2024

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Most Americans are now acutely aware that we have a housing crisis, but Atlantic writer Jerusalem Demsas says that we have much less clarity about what’s causing it. “All too often,” she writes, “explanations center around identifying a villain: greedy developers, or private equity companies, or racist neighbors, or gentrifiers, or corrupt politicians.” All which may be true, she says, but they fail to identify the root cause, that housing decisions are made at the hyper local level, in a tangle of zoning boards, historical preservation committees and sparsely attended meetings, “where no one is watching and no one is accountable.” We talk to Demsas about her new collection of essays, “On the Housing Crisis: Land, Development, Democracy” and why she thinks local governments are to blame for the housing shortage. Guests: Jerusalem Demsas, staff writer, Atlantic Magazine; author, On the Housing Crisis: Land, Development, Democracy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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1:30.3	Jerusalem Demsus has made a name for herself as an essayist who's willing to follow the facts wherever they lead. Much of her work is focused on the root causes of the housing crisis, which she lays out in a new anthology of her work at the Atlantic. It's called on the housing crisis land development democracy. We'll
1:46.0	talk about what she identifies as the core problem, and it's not developers, gentrification,
1:51.4	or private equity companies, but local government structural nimbism. It's going to be an intriguing,
1:57.2	provocative hour, and that's coming up next after this news.
2:14.1	Thank you. intriguing, provocative hour. And that's coming up next after this news. Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Nobody listening to this program needs to be reminded that we have a housing affordability crisis in this area and across the country.
2:24.3	What is worth remembering is that it has not always been this way. The gap between incomes and housing prices or the ratio of income to rent used to be different, hugely different,
2:35.0	and even in notoriously expensive places like the Bay Area.
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