This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, September 11th,

2003. I'm Caleb Brown. There are lots of things that didn't cause the

housing affordability crisis taking root throughout the United States,

but the overwhelmingly local problem of approving new housing demands local solutions,

according to Greg Brooks of the Better Cities Project.

We spoke last month in Chicago about what that might look like.

I think Americans broadly have come to accept the incorrect notion that their homes ought to increase in value year over year by some

small but real percentage. And that, hopefully the financial crisis taught us that that's just not true. But it's also indicative of this massive housing crisis that we have in the United States that is just

now sort of really having a big impact in some particular areas.

Right, and it's, I like to think of it less as a housing crisis than as a building crisis, right?

We know how to build homes. We know exactly what areas the

demand is greatest. We know what, you know, there's nobody better than a developer

at understanding product market fit and yet across the nation at

the state level down into the smallest little burbs we are resistant and then people wake up and they're surprised when they cannot

afford a home or when their children graduate college and have to move away

because housing is too expensive in their market

for them to start their own families there.

And people throw up their hands and claim that it's some sort of bad luck or it's due to inflation and the reality is no we've made this problem for ourselves and we can fix it for

ourselves.

Yeah, so I don't want to get into too many details but I've watched the emails

occasionally from the mortgage originator on my home and it's peace be

unto him I I just don't believe it. Like the the the

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