Alex Schafran

5 Posts

Alex Schafran is a writer and consultant focused on transforming California's housing future. He is the author of The Road to Resegregation: Northern California and the Failure of Politics and The Spatial Contract: A New Politics of Provision for an Urbanized Planet , and a visiting scholar at the Institute for Metropolitan Studies at San José State University. His most recent writing can be found on his California-flavored housing substack, and in his new podcast for housing professionals, Housing After Dark.

Illustration of a right hand holding a small red two-dimensional house between thumb and index finger. The hand is dark blue and the arm, shown a bit beyond the wrist, is wearing a white shirt and suit jacket. The background of the image is a city skyline, in lighter shades of the same blue, with puffy clouds above.

Opinion

Ownership Matters: Institutional Investors and Corporate Ownership

May 23, 2024 | Alex Schafran

Who owns our homes is an absolutely essential part of housing policy, and an even greater part of housing politics.

Opinion

How to Retrofit the Housing Economy

August 30, 2022 | Alex Schafran

Are policy changes enough to address the housing problems we face?

Interview

Transforming the Development Industry: A Conversation with Charmaine Curtis

August 29, 2022 | Alex Schafran

Moving away from financialized housing will take developers who are willing to operate differently.

Interview

Housing Vulnerability Analysis: A Discussion

July 10, 2019 | Alex Schafran

A pilot study on housing vulnerability has identified over 50 different housing tenures, each with different degrees of legal protection, political and advocacy support, and with very different types of risk.

Practitioner Voice

A New Perspective on Housing Tenure

September 28, 2016 | Jake Wegmann and Alex Schafran

Those of us who work in housing and housing policy know how complicated housing tenure can be. The most common forms of tenure, which describes the legal status under which […]