Many, many Americans are paying more than they can afford to keep a roof over their heads.

Maybe some of them were tempted by fancier digs than their budgets would really allow.

But the vast majority find themselves with

no choice. They live in communities where there simply are not enough homes in their price range to

accommodate everybody who needs them. From KERA in Dallas, this is Think. I'm Chris Boyd. The solution is

economics 101. Build more low-cost housing, including plenty of multifamily units like

apartments, shortages ease up, and prices come down for everybody. But while individual communities

are hurt by the lack of affordable housing, my guest has learned that for this particular problem,

local governments are often not in a great position to implement solutions. Jerusalem

Dempsis is a staff writer at the Atlantic. Her book-length collection of articles is called On the

Housing Crisis, Land Development Democracy. Jerusalem, welcome to think.

Hi, thanks for having me. I just want to start with this term crisis. What makes this country's housing situation at this moment worthy of that label?

Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, obviously for a lot of people, especially folks who are at the very low end of the rental market, folks who have been homeless. I mean, for decades, this has been a crisis

for them. But I think what's happened is that you've seen this balloon far past folks who are

very low income to include working class, middle class, and even upper middle class people

who are searching for housing, whether that's rental opportunities that are affordable

to them near good jobs or good schools or near their family, or it's people trying to break into

home ownership. And that phenomenon, the phenomenon of someone who has a good job, someone who has a stable

home environment and isn't experiencing some other unrelated crisis, that those people

also are having trouble finding housing that meets their needs.

That's, I think, what has caused more and more people to label this a crisis.

Part of the reason I started there was that you write that there's a surprising amount

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