Imagine a reasonably modest home in a highly desirable zip code, and let's say it's on offer for a million dollars.

Most Americans cannot swing the payments for a mortgage that high. But build the

exact same structure in a different part of the country, maybe the selling price is less than

half that. If there is a shortage of affordable places for Americans to live, some advocates say,

maybe we just need to start building where land is cheap. From KERA in Dallas, this is Think. I'm Chris Boyd. You know who owns a lot

of land that could be sold at bargain basement prices? The federal government. It is a fascinating

idea that seems to be worth talking through, so we've invited Michael Albertus to join us today.

He is professor of political science at the University of Chicago and author of an

article for Bloomberg titled, The U.S. government is sitting on a possible solution to the housing

crisis. Michael, welcome to think. Thanks. It's great to be here. So many challenges these days get

labeled crises that I think the word doesn't pack quite the same cognitive punch

that it once did. Will you start by describing for us the state of the housing shortage and why it

does, in fact, deserve to be called a crisis? So American housing and people who are in the housing

market are facing a situation that that really is unprecedented in many ways.

So since the financial crisis in 2008, construction never really caught back up with demand.

And as a result, the housing market is short several million units depending on how you measure it. And that's one of the major

contributing factors to a reduction in supply and pushing up housing prices. Of course, the

pandemic supercharged a lot of this, and housing prices have risen even more precipitously in the last several years.

Is this a shortage in all forms of housing like single-family detached homes and

multifamily apartments and condos and rentals and purchases, everything?

It is a shortage in housing pretty much across the board. Of course, housing markets are in many ways regional

markets. So the constraints that consumers and the buyers face and that sellers encounter as well

...