My new book, The Affordable City, is out September 15th. It’s a how-to guide for affordable housing policies and programs, and it makes the case that truly affordable, just, and accessible cities require us to prioritize Supply, Stability, and Subsidy policies. None by itself will ever be enough. Click here to order it from Island Press. You can also purchase it from Amazon and other online booksellers.
Four years ago, I wrote an article with the unwieldy title of “Renter Opposition to New Housing Isn’t About Keeping LA Affordable, It’s About Self Preservation (And That’s Okay).” In it I argued that renters displaced by development were justified in their anger and fear, even if the new development was a net gain for the city and its affordability. I made the case that planners and housing advocates need to offer a vision of the city in which housing is abundant & affordable and existing residents can remain safe, stable, and welcome in the communities they call home.
The article was borne of frustration with how the housing debate had evolved in Los Angeles and many other cities: you could be pro-housing or pro-tenant, but not both, and support for one implied opposition to the other. This view is wrong and counterproductive, and I felt the urge to push back against it. I proposed a “yes, and” approach to housing policy, and over the next four years it developed into a 280-page book called The Affordable City.
You can purchase The Affordable City from Island Press, or Amazon, or other online booksellers.
The book is divided into three housing policy goals/strategies: What I call the Three S’s of Supply, Stability, and Subsidy. I explore why each is essential and describe the different purposes they serve, and provide roughly a dozen policies in each section that help illustrate how to bring each goal to life. I also take care to discuss the tensions between Supply, Stability, and Subsidy, recognizing that poorly designed policies in service of one goal can undermine the success of others.
To help introduce people to the book, I’m providing several excerpted sections here on my blog. Below, I excerpt a passage from the introduction where I summarize the purpose and necessity of each of the Three S’s. In separate posts, I excerpt more thorough explanations for why each goal is so important. Those can be found here: Supply. Stability. Subsidy.
Supply is about having enough homes for everyone. When housing is hard to come by, all other obstacles to affordability and accessibility become exponentially more difficult to overcome. Rents and home prices rise as a result of scarcity, the cost of construction balloons as land and labor grow more expensive, landlords gain leverage over renters (and sellers over buyers), and poorer tenants are replaced by higher-earning households, with the less fortunate pushed to areas with fewer amenities and limited access to jobs, education, and community. Many cities have limited land available for development, but housing can always be built up rather than out. Oregon’s ban on single-family zoning is one example of how we can make more space on already developed land, though more aggressive tactics will also be required. Providing an abundant supply of homes is about growing the pie for everyone’s benefit rather than dividing it into smaller and smaller slices as a population grows. Supply is about recognizing the economic and physical realities of housing and making the most of both.
Stability is about recognizing the dignity of housing—that it’s more than an investment vehicle and a means of creating personal wealth, as it is often treated today. It relates to tenant protections and rental housing preservation, two overarching programs that ensure all residents have access to safe, clean, affordable housing without fear that the rug might someday be pulled out from under them. Just-cause eviction protections and rent stabilization programs, found in Oregon, California, and elsewhere, are a few examples of stabilizing policy. Providing stability to those who want it, and to renters in particular, is how we turn housing into homes. The people who most depend on this stability are neither wealthy nor politically connected, but their well-being is the barometer against which we measure our commitment to basic human rights and dignity. If supply is about the economic and physical realities of housing, stability is about our moral obligations to those who live in it.
Subsidy is about ensuring that everyone enjoys the benefits of abundant housing and stable communities. A well-regulated private housing market can serve a large portion of our population, and tenant protections paired with rental housing preservation can assist even more. But there will always be people who are left behind by these efforts—sometimes temporarily, sometimes permanently. Acting through the collective will of our local, state, and federal governments, we have a responsibility to provide support to those who need it and to live up to our professed belief that housing is a human right. This may take the form of rental assistance, publicly subsidized housing construction and acquisition, and a host of other programs. Local efforts, such as Los Angeles’s $1.2 billion measure to fund homeless housing and Durham, North Carolina’s $95 million housing bond, exemplify such programs, and proposals such as US Representative Ilhan Omar’s $1 trillion Homes for All Act would expand such programs to national scope. Supply and stability are our goals, and subsidy is an essential tool to ensure that they’re delivered to every member of society regardless of income or background.
Supply, Stability, and Subsidy are all indispensable ingredients in the affordable city recipe book, and each is discussed in much greater detail in the sections that follow. One without the others will not bring true affordability and stability to a community—certainly not to all who need and deserve it. Nor can we simply enact the strongest possible intervention for one goal without considering its impacts on the others. Often, the most aggressive solution to one problem will undermine the best response to another.
Without the support of tenant protections and public subsidies, unfettered development may keep prices from rising but also may raise concerns about displacement and community disruption. It may stabilize rents, but by itself be unlikely to dramatically lower them. And it almost certainly won’t create housing that’s affordable to those subsisting on poverty-level or working-class wages. Supply may depend on the market, but advocates for supply should not be solely and slavishly devoted to the “free market.” Pro-supply housing policies are essential, but they’re not enough by themselves.
Without supply to stave off scarcity and public funds to support those with the greatest need, the benefits of tenant protections and rental housing preservation will be unnecessarily constrained. Policies such as rent control help existing residents stay in their homes, but they do little to accommodate future growth from native-born children, new residents from other cities and states, and immigrants. They may keep things from getting worse for many renters, but they have little power to make things better. Designed poorly, price controls may also replace income-based discrimination with other, more insidious forms of discrimination, such as those based on race, gender, family composition, or other perceived markers of “good” tenants. Tenant protections and rental housing preservation are essential, but they’re not enough by themselves.
Without an adequate supply of housing and robust tenant protections, additional funding will mostly be absorbed into higher rents and construction costs. We’ll end up pouring huge sums of money into assistance for people who, if not for poor policy decisions relating to supply and tenant protections, would never have needed assistance in the first place. And we’ll have less money left over to assist the people who truly need it. Public subsidies are essential, but they’re not enough by themselves.
If that left you wanting more, The Affordable City awaits! If you’re still not sure, or just want to learn a bit more, I encourage you to check out the longer excerpts for each of the Three S’s. Once again, those can be found here: Supply. Stability. Subsidy.