Housing Supply

Here’s something we don’t talk about enough: developing affordable housing in a tight, high-cost market also increases overall affordability through filtering! Just in the other direction—it trickles up.

If we built enough housing, we would still need subsidized housing for many people, but market prices would be low enough that most people could afford them. But we’ve chosen not to. And the reason we give for that choice, more than any other, is that we are trying to preserve or improve the character of our communities.

In a previous Shelterforce blog post, I argued that we cannot give up hope that the market will build middle-income housing. Granted, over the past decade, most new housing has been […]

There has been a renewed interest in the role that the real estate market can play in solving our growing affordable housing crisis. For decades “affordable housing” has been the […]

The meager supply of affordable housing is a major contributor to housing’s high cost, yet the policy tools to address the shortfall often seem to worsen the problem. But this is because they ignore the underlying infrastructure and financing to support growth.

We can’t build our way out of the housing crisis . . . but we won’t get out without building.

It’s been said that children are the indicator species of urban health and great neighborhoods, and by this measure, Oakland is in trouble.