A new study from the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality has found that new housing stock in six high-growth metropolitan areas primarily served moderate- and higher-income households, while lower-income households experienced higher rent growth than higher-income households.
The United States is facing an existential crisis due to a lack of political imagination and a scarcity mindset, which has led to the criminalization of poverty, homelessness, and immigration, and a reliance on punishment rather than investment in social programs.
The argument that declining birth rates will eventually relieve housing pressure is flawed, as it ignores the economic, migratory, and climate forces that will shape demand far more powerfully than fertility trends in the decades ahead, and the housing crisis is a present shortfall that needs to be addressed now.
Zillow Chief Economist Svenja Gudell warned in 2016 that the imbalance between demand for low- and middle-income housing and the overwhelming share of new luxury apartment construction would deepen affordability pressures, but policymakers and housing advocates ignored her warning and prioritized market faith over material outcomes.
Opposition to housing construction is often rooted in population alarmism, which treats people as the problem and scarcity as a moral necessity, rather than a policy failure, and ignores the benefits of density and the adaptability of social systems.
Institutional investors are being blamed for driving up home prices, but the real cause of the affordability crisis is chronic undersupply of housing due to restrictive zoning, procedural delays, and legal challenges.
Journalist Brian Goldstone argues that homelessness in America is not primarily caused by joblessness or individual dysfunction, but by economic and housing structures that make it difficult for working families to afford housing.
California’s housing crisis is being driven by political hesitation, outdated zoning choices, and a regulatory and fiscal framework that often undermines the goals of elected leaders, resulting in low housing production and rising costs.
The U.S. housing and homelessness crisis is driven by a widening structural gap between household incomes and the cost of housing, disproportionately affecting families with children, Black families, and single-mother households, and exacerbated by rigid public assistance eligibility rules.
After 25 years of Measure J, Davis must confront the reality that the policy has not produced the desired results of better projects and housing outcomes, but has instead entrenched a system of rejection, delay, and unmet state obligations.
Systemic failures in housing, health, and employment are often blamed on individuals rather than the systems themselves, which ignores the fact that wages have not kept pace with housing costs, the health system ties care to employment, and jobs are automated, outsourced, or turned into gig work without benefits.
Abundance, a book by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, argues that many of America’s most damaging crises are the result of deliberate choices that constrain supply, slow delivery and fragment authority, and that to have the future we want, we need to build and invent more of what we need.
California’s freeway expansion has been a major driver of the state’s housing crisis, displacing thousands of families and demolishing homes and businesses, while failing to provide meaningful traffic relief.
California’s population has increased slightly in recent years, but the state’s decades-long failure to build enough homes to meet demand has resulted in high rents and prices, making it difficult for people to afford to live in the state.
The Housing BOOM Act, proposed by U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff, seeks to increase housing production across the country, with a focus on affordable and middle-income housing, by expanding the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, creating new federal programs, and investing in homelessness prevention.
A severe shortage of construction workers is driving the nation’s housing crisis, resulting in an estimated $10.8 billion annual loss linked to delayed projects and homes that never get built, and requiring a national workforce mobilization to address the issue.
Homelessness is primarily caused by unaffordable housing, not addiction or mental illness, and is exacerbated by a lack of safety nets and the collapse of low-cost rentals.
America’s housing crisis is due to decades of underbuilding and a lack of political incentives to build more homes, resulting in a shortage of 2-5 million homes and rising prices, and a need for new policies to incentivize renters to push for more housing and to shift to modular construction to reduce costs.
Poverty in the Bay Area increased in 2023, with more than 245,000 residents falling below the poverty line, due to rising rents, cuts to federal and local assistance programs, and a cost of living that is outpacing wages.
The Davis Joint Unified School District Board of Education is facing a potential loss of 1,000 students over the next decade due to rising housing prices, falling birth rates, and changes in UC Davis’s workforce patterns, which could lead to school closures and staff cuts unless two proposed housing developments are approved.