On the Housing Crisis: Land, Development, Democracy

by Jerusalem Demsas

A rigorously reported anthology on how local politics have fueled a generation-defining national emergency. An Atlantic Edition, featuring long-form journalism by Atlantic writers, drawn from contemporary articles or classic storytelling from the magazine’s 167-year archive.

In this precise collection, Atlantic staff writer Jerusalem Demsas turns her expertise and keen eye to the housing shortage, one of our country’s most dire yet widely misunderstood public frustrations. Demsas examines how local democracies have become coconspirators in the anti-development aspirations of the very few, at the hefty expense of the many. These essays identify the inefficiencies and irrationalities of contemporary land-use politics and the stages they play out on, offering readers a refreshing and accessible guide to a generational crisis.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Essays, Urbanism, Cities, Economics, Urban Planning

127 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 3, 2024

Reviews

[Dona's Books · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thank you to the author Jerusalem Demsas, publishers Zando, and NetGalley for an advance digital copy of ON THE HOUSING CRISIS. I found an accessible copy on Libby. All views are mine.

Everyone has a little NIMBY [Not In My Back Yard] in them. It doesn’t have to be the part that wins. p22

Three (or less) things I didn't love:

This section isn't only for criticisms. It's merely for items that I felt something for other than "love" or some interpretation thereof.

1. I think she underestimates the impact of investment-owned homes. She chastises the owners of such beliefs, telling them to check their numbers, and then cherry picks her own numbers. As of 2023, as much as 26% single family home sales were to investors, as opposed to occupying homeowners. She doesn't even look at this figure, which has been increasing year on year since the start of the pandemic.

2. I do not get along with this book's tone. Jerusalem Demsas may be a celebrated journalist, but she often insults her readers, either with snide tone, or more directly: I don’t want to be hyperbolic, but the idea that these firms are ultimately responsible for our housing-affordability crisis is absolutely ridiculous, and no one who knows anything about housing markets believes it. p73 If I'm not mistaken, she just implied that her readers are "ridiculous" for their beliefs, which I believe she is trying to change here with this book. Unless she intended to write her book for the people who already agree with her. That's always fun. Besides-- I was Courtside in 2008 when unstable housing markets brought this country to its knees. There is nothing ridiculous about being concerned with investor meddling with the housing market. We know how that turns out.

3. This really isn't a book about the housing crisis, because Demsas doesn't recognize one. Each essay in this collection might touch on housing or relate in some way to housing, but not so much that I would even say this book is about housing in general. It is, however a collection of heavily political statements, about everything from the procedures and practices for allowing communities to make statements before development licenses are granted, to that one about the guy who made an official comment about a building project, whom she (and a bunch of other journalists) then pursued for an unnamed purpose, which I'm guessing  was a story that we all already know anyway. In another of her essays, Demsas writes about how we vote too much in our communities and states in the US. But I didn’t read anything in this book about a housing crisis.

Rating: 💧.5 /5 bitter tears
Recommend? No, but it has its audience, likely fans of unregulated markets
Finished: Oct 24 '24
Format: Digital arc, NetGalley
Read this book if you like:
📈 economics
💵 financial journalism
📄 financial policy

[Alberto Della Torre · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of essays that create a succinctly convincing argument that local 'democracy' is systemically causing the housing crisis. My critique is that there is no exploration using non-market housing options.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This series collects one author's previously published essays from The Atlantic on a cohesive subject. I am very concerned about the housing crisis as a millennial who doesn't expect to ever manage home ownership. On the Housing Crisis discusses the interrelated issues surrounding the American housing crisis, including rising housing costs, insufficient housing (particularly affordable housing), the legal challenges preventing the construction of affordable housing, and rising rates of homelessness.

A downside of this collection is that they reiterate the same few arguments. I found myself wanting more from the author's critiques of NIMBYs and the housing shortage, while wishing less time had been paid to the shortcomings of leaving housing regulations to hyperlocal governments. I did find the information about regulations that often prevent developers from building apartments, duplexes, and smaller homes (the types of housing that are in the most demand and with the greatest shortages nationally). The essays on homelessness are especially compelling and insightful. I am. intrigued and motivated to find more books that examine these issues more deeply.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Princess · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have followed Jerusalem’s work for a long time! Jerusalem's insightful reporting on the housing crisis has been a refreshing read for someone like me, who has spent years working in and studying housing policy and law in Canada. Her perspective, rooted in community development, has shifted my understanding of the role that community participation can play in our current systems, particularly at the local level. Democracy remains crucial, especially in a society where a diverse range of people must share land, infrastructure, and resources. However, is the the real change lies in organizing to elevate marginalized voices into elected positions, while eliminating the barriers for input? This may ensure that decisions on housing and climate policy are made free from the influence of lobbying and NIMBYism leading to more equitable and effective outcomes like building the supply of housing we actually need.

[Jasper Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good read after Abundance. I appreciate it framing NIMBYS as rational, if not sympathetic, actors. Every other book I have read on the topic frames them as cartoon villains hoarding the value of their homes.

[Anton Gromóczki · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the strongest journalistic voices on housing.

[Inês · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the U.S., moving decision-making from the hyper-local level to the state level is the first step to fixing the broken development process.

[Francis · Rating 4 out of 5]

overall a good number of good points well made. the form is inherently a little limiting: i’d have liked a little more data and a little less repetition.

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible. If I had $$$ I would send everybody i know a copy of this collection. I would sit down and force every home owner to read it.

[Suzanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you regularly read The Atlantic, you’ve likely read most of these essays. That said, it’s a tidy collection, organized in a cohesive order. Demsas’ introduction is insightful. Somehow this book, published in 2024, is both outdated and intensely relevant to our current crises in 2025.
Read for city Housing Committee book discussion.

[Vince McManus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Striving every day to embrace complexity and data wonkery in my views of our societal challenges as well as Jerusalem Demsas.

[Jeremy Faust · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is a supply issue

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is strongest is the later chapters. I had a hard time with the earlier chapters where the author argues for bringing land dispute issues up to the state level but doesn’t provide examples of effectiveness. Similarly, the author argues that participatory democracy disproportionately benefits old, white male land owners (true) but then argues for removing citizen input entirely instead of a potential middle ground where the government seeks to increase access for marginalized groups (such as holding off hour meetings, increasing budgets to provide transportation stipends or day care, more participatory engagement research methods rather than open, oral town halls) while reducing the impact of individual citizen input and interest group input on final decision making processes. Effectively - I would have liked to see more solutions put forth rather than just issues identified throughout the initial chapters.

[Thomas B · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up at Politics & Prose at the Wharf on Tuesday, at an event with the author. This was the first I’d heard or read Demsas’ writing. It’s good! The event was enjoyable.

The book is a collection of Demsas’ writing on housing for The Atlantic. I appreciate the continued focus on housing supply as the critical component to our struggles, especially as relates to homelessness. Our country loves finding scapegoats, but it really is a simple problem: we need more housing. All other considerations are secondary.

There are some parts of the articles I’m not in total alignment with, but these are relatively few. Good collection of articles.

[Dalton TM · Rating 4 out of 5]

Demsas is a generational writer. She concisely and convincingly conveys the NIMBY-biases of local government that stifle housing development, the relationship between homelessness and housing scarcity, and much more.

This book is a collection of essays originally published by The Atlantic, spanning several years. As a result, some anecdotes and analytical phrases are reused nearly verbatim across multiple “chapters”. The essays skew more journalistic than academic due to their original publication medium, which may irritate readers seeking a compilation of research.

Overall, this is a brilliant analysis of the core issues driving America’s housing crisis.

[Lindsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

When the Atlantic journalist is trying to vindicate for-profit developers you know something is truly broken about the public’s housing and real estate narrative. I deeply enjoyed this and her commentary around the issues related to the housing crisis (land use, democracy, homelessness). Should be required reading.

8/10

[Jakub Dovcik · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really great collection of essays previously published in The Atlantic by a policy journalist and writer, Jerusalem Demsas. Not just on the housing crisis, the book also deals with problems of local (or rather hyperlocal) democracy, framing of policy issues that are impacting housing policy and more generally, power within the urban America.

Land use and zoning regulations in America create 'a legal regime [that is] stealthily enforcing an archaic set of aesthetic and moral preferences.' But they also have, after the traumas of urban renewal in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, a significant number of veto points on the hyperlocal level (county, city and below) where those who show up - the infamous NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard-s, the wealthier, the older, the more powerful) have a disproportionate voice. People who are negatively impacted by new construction are present and loud, whereas the potential beneficiaries of the new projects are often not yet in the community and are thus invisible.

A result is a chronic undersupply of housing in urban America, which exacerbates inequality through a rise in housing prices for the wealthy and often homelessness for the poor, especially in places like California, where the restrictive zoning laws are baked into a local version of individualistic liberalism.

One of Demsas’ arguments is that Americans vote too often on too many things, and for regular people, it is thus hard to actually follow what is going on and have a voice in their affairs. Many races go unopposed, and the incumbents can game the system by putting local election dates on random dates (off-cycle or even in August!). Turnout on these dates is then ridiculously low, and cities are governed by pressure groups (think police or teacher unions, or wealthy residents).

Demsas also does a good job of documenting the hypocrisy of American liberals (or former liberals now?) like Mark Andressen, who can pen an essay calling for America to build again but at the same time send emails to their city council members to oppose ‘multifamily zoning overlays’ being built within their neighbourhood - sometimes for the members of the police force keeping them safe!

The essay ‘The Real Villain in the Gentrification Story’ is a great reframing of the traditional narrative about gentrification. Rather than blaming yippies and professionals more generally who are moving to poorer areas, the real question should be why is the new construction of housing only allowed in these areas and not in wealthier neighbourhoods. It is because the homeowners in American cities use their power to block the construction of housing from people from their socioeconomic groups or the more upwardly mobile classes that the only place where new construction can happen. A similar case is with large institutional investors, whose scale is much smaller than is assumed (at most 8% of new housing in some states) and as Demsas argues, the houses owned by them are then rented out, so policies against institutional investors buying houses are effectively policies against renters.

The patterns of urban development are visible in the phenomenon of the ‘Black flight’ - the flow of middle-class African-Americans to suburban areas visible from the 1970s. This creates significant rifts within the community, as the newly suburban populations have significant income growth, whereas the inner-city ones are stagnant or declining. This then trickles down with the breakdowns within community organisations like churches, which are unable to sustain themselves within the inner cities due to the flight of middle-class Blacks.

Interesting is also an essay on the origins of the anti-natality and anti-immigration discourses in the overpopulation scares of the 60s and 70s - like the impact of Paul Erlich’s Zero Population Growth organisation and its offshoots. I am not sure how this connection between the overpopulation scare and anti-migration policies holds more generally, but it is fascinating how it can be seen in the zoning laws.

What Demsas recommends is for America to just build more, limit the number of veto points and move more decisions about zoning and land use towards state governments. These are more representative because elections for them have higher turnouts, and the officeholders have a wider perspective on issues like housing - which impact people across the state.

Overall, it is a really amazing collection of essays on urban policy and politics, written neatly and enjoyably. I am not sure how much are the insights from this book accurate for other, non-American contexts, but it is definitely an interesting framework through which to look at specific issues in urban and land-use policy.

[joe2436 · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a strong collection of essays, originally published in the Atlantic, covering a range of housing and environment-related topics. First off, I felt that each of these essays was well-written, informative, and thought-provoking. However, my feelings towards the opinions that Demsas expresses range from compete agreement to frustrated disagreement. On the positive side, she does some great myth-busting around the root causes of homelessness, gentrification, and private firms' role in increasing home prices. However, I have a big problem with the essays that focus on democracy.

Demsas argues, in a number of different contexts, that local democracy is the fundamental cause of the housing crisis. She argues that local government is too powerful, that representative governments are a truer form of democracy, and that local elections should happen far less often. Essentially, Demsas is arguing that the US should have a system more like Europe, where decisions are made at a higher level by representatives, instead of at the local level through direct input and elections. I think that many of Demsas' points are correct, but I think making local government the scapegoat in the housing crisis is flawed and antidemocratic. I do agree that state and federal authorities should have more ability to veto exclusionary policies, just like how state and federal agencies fight against housing discrimination through the Fair Housing Act. For example, if a citizen's group doesn't want affordable housing built in their community, I think the government should simply be able to say: 'Nope. You need it.' However, I don't think this means that local government is a bad thing or should be diminished. As dysfunctional as it can be, local democracy is a fundamental part of American society and culture. Whether she realizes it or not, I think Demsas falls face-first into liberal progressive elitist snobbery, essentially saying, "local governments are incapable of making the right decisions for their communities, so the job should be given to elected representatives who actually know what they're doing." She comes damn close in a couple essays to basically saying this exact thing. I have great respect for the parliamentary systems that exist in Europe and admit that they often function better than Americans systems, but I think this attitude is total progressive elitist snobbery.

I do think that state and federal governments should have the responsibility to ban exclusionary practices from local municipalities. Just like how the racial segregation of jim crow is illegal, I think that the class segregation of single-family zoning should also be illegal. Governments can ban such practices in municipalities without erasing the fundamental institution that is local democracy. Demsas scapegoats local democracies while ignoring many, many other factors in the housing crisis, such as arcane regulations generated from state and federal policies, as well as the lack of effective production in the housing market. Local governments have plenty of problems and should be seriously reformed, but I didn't appreciate how they were framed as the source of this problem.

Enough of my soap box. Maybe a good way to summarize this is that I thought Demsas has a strong understanding of housing, but a weaker understanding of political philosophy. Regardless, this is an informative and thought-provoking read for anyone interested in the topic, and I definitely recommend.

[Ivan Gaalen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This excellent collection of essays by Jerusalem Demsas has appeared previously in the Atlantic. Although I have read many of them before, it was a pleasure to reread them and to find some new ones. She is one of the best writers on the housing crisis.

She writes, "Housing is the core of everyone's life. It's how you live. It's where you live and how you feel safe in the world." For most of our history, Americans have been able to move to areas where they found job opportunities. Now, that is no longer the case. People can no longer relocate to places where the jobs are because the cost of housing outpaces the increase in earnings. There is not enough affordable housing being built where the jobs are. This has occurred in high-growth cities such as San Francisco, Seattle, and New York for quite some time. However, the problem is spreading to other areas as well, such as Idaho and Utah.

We know land-use regulations and zoning ordinances determine what can be built in a given area. Ostensibly, these laws are put in place to preserve the character of the neighborhood, protect the environment, and control the density of the population. Although these laws are necessary, there is a nefarious underside of the moral and esthetic choices made by local governments. For example, neighborhoods zoned single-family dwellings (about 75% of US residential) want to exclude more affordable multi-family dwellings because they are not in "character" with the neighborhood. The underlying reason is they bring down property values. These laws are created by local governments and those who have the loudest voices behind the decision-makers. They end up rewarding those who live there and penalizing those who want to move there.

This is just one facet of the problem. The author discusses the various mindsets of the actors, creating roadblocks to new housing. For example, some are in denial that we have enough housing. By some estimates, we are about 3 million units short. Or, there are residents of low-income areas who say that new housing in their neighborhood will drive up prices. Apparently, they don't believe in the law of supply and demand.

That being said, we, as a country, can build all the affordable housing needed, and it doesn't have to be subsidized. Witness LA Mayor Karen Bass's Executive Directive 1. Developers were given the ability to build affordable housing with fewer regulatory constraints and make a profit. Much new housing was built until the inevitable backlash. Everybody wants affordable housing, just not in their neighborhood. The main obstacles to solving the housing crisis are social and political.

[Amber · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quick and compelling mini-book laying out both the causes of the housing crisis and some potential solutions. She really eviscerates the very dumb arguments around gentrification--not least, that it's the result of wealthy homeowners restrict development in their neighborhoods--and generally writes about research on the topic in an engaging and non-academic way. I'm an OG YIMBY, so a lot of it I was familiar with, but even still some fascinating findings I hadn't realized--specifically that the decline in institutional racism led to an increase in concentrated urban poverty, as "the number of high-socioeconomic-status, majority-Black census tracts more than doubled from 1970 to 2016, and almost all of that growth was in the suburbs. ... Before the 1970s, when most high- and middle-income Black households had no choice but to live in cities, they also had no choice but to live alongside low-income households. The implications here are a bit unnerving: Racial segregation gave lower-socioeconomic-status Black households access to interactions with higher-status ones. The unwinding of the legal regime of segregation may have allowed middle-class Black families to separate their fortunes from their lower-income compatriots."

And perhaps most compelling around the need to build: "America has had populations of mentally ill, drug- addicted, poor, and unemployed people for the whole of its history, and Los Angeles has always been warmer than Duluth—and yet the homelessness crisis we see in American cities today dates only to the 1980s. What changed that caused homelessness to explode then? Again, it’s simple: lack of housing. The places people needed to move for good jobs stopped building the housing necessary to accommodate economic growth."

[Colby Edwards · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the breakdown of the issues, but I felt the attitude the author had was incredibly pessimistic and dismissive of the concerns of normal people. She is right that many of those who oppose housing development are loud people who show up to community meetings, but many of them are also normal, average people. I agree that considerations for housing should be left up to elected officials and that community meetings regarding specifically variances and zoning changes should be limited, but ultimately, people generally want to feel like they have control over their lives and by extension, what’s happening in their communities. Like any policy, you have to sell why this is a good thing for the community rather than dismiss people’s concerns and tell them they’re wrong because the data says this. She made good points, but was very condescending and dismissive towards some views held by average, normal people. I did appreciate her dogging on those well-organized, wealthy people who have incredibly hateful and elitist views towards people.

I felt like her analysis on the political implications of not dealing with homelessness was spot on. We do need to build significantly more housing in urban areas to alleviate homelessness, and hypocritical, well-organized liberals shutting the door on their neighbors to instead pursue some false idea of urban utopia is wrong.

[Daniel Elliott · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have mixed feelings when I read something like this. Part of me despairs about how deep and intractable the housing problem is in America, but then there’s another part of me that’s like “hell yeah, the neoliberal consensus still has shooters out here.”

I didn’t come to this for some hot libertarian takes, so I can’t complain too much about the romance of democracy. But for someone with a really Bryan Caplan view of politics, it’s hard not to feel like she’s deluding herself to think that local politics are somehow more stupid than state or national level politics. If anything this book just made me more cynical because I often have this feeling of “oh how sad it is that national politics are infecting local politics” when in reality local politics are actually horrible and have given us a massive shortage of housing across the country that causes homelessness and plummeting fertility and just generally makes the whole country poorer and worse off. So while it’s sad to see the brain worms of national politics come to local politics, it certainly isn’t ruining some pristine garden. Turns out political behavior is very stupid and bad and you shouldn’t expect too much from it!

[calum · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential to anyone who wants to truly understand America's housing crisis. The housing crisis can be confusing; lots of people out there try to decisively say its one thing or another, like gentrification or overpopulation or greedy developers. It can be hard to figure out what's what. But Demsas focuses on the right issues; land use, local democracy, zoning, and more. I was acquainted with most of what she talks about before I picked up a copy, but even for me this book was very informative; Demsas has done her research here, and it shows in each essay, where she points to specific statistics, projects, and laws that elucidate her point. Although obviously not the star, Demsas's writing itself deserves praise too. Her preciseness and her wit, among other things, all contribute to making this a book well worth reading. I seriously can't recommend this enough to people wanting to truly understand the reasons behind our housing crisis.

[Michael Lewyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This short book is a set of the author's magazine articles on the housing crisis, mostly from a left-libertarian point of view: that is, she generally leans left on most issues, but supports allowing construction of more housing.

Her most interesting essays attack the myth that the current system of restrictive zoning is democratic: she points out that zoning meetings are so sparsely attended that they do not reflect public opinion. She also points out that allowing every municipality to dictate development rules create a "individual rationality/collective irrationality problem"- that is, it is in the interest of individual neighborhoods or municipalities to keep rents high and the lower classes out, but it is in the interest of a city or region as a whole to have abundant, cheap housing.

[Jon Silver · Rating 4 out of 5]

interesting short collection of essays (about the housing crisis obviously) that primarily argue the shortage of housing and the myriad veto points in getting projects approved (as well as the vested interests of homeowners to use those veto points) are driving the crisis, casting aside developers, gentrification, migrants, hedge funds and other commonly blamed scapegoats. I enjoyed the essay discussing how when neighborhoods have development it makes you feel that the development is driving the price increases but actually that development is just a drop in the bucket combating the housing shortage (which remains the cause of the increase). Good arguments against NIMBYism and only 137 tiny pages so that's fun.

[Astrid · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think because this is a collection of different articles, a lot of the same points got repeated a lot (explaining NIMBY, etc.). Beyond that though, I found it very very interesting. I was especially down with the last couple essays on homelessness and the silliness of people who hate to see homelessness but are opposed to the idea of affordable housing being built in their area.

I also thought the descriptions of the very limited number of people who engage in the planning world and who control so many city and regional housing decisions was really fascinating! Not sure if I totally jive with the author's view that local government shouldn't have any role in housing policy, but this book helped me see better all the ways that our current system is hugely flawed.

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Smart and efficient collection of essays on US housing policy, focusing on NIMBY and supply-side policy issues. These all circle around the same couple of themes and at times presumes an audience that's already bought in on the key pieces of the argument. But I'm a member of that audience and enjoyed the quick-hit essays in here, even if sometimes it felt like the material could use a longer and more in-depth treatment.

[Jack Sebring · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good read about the real factors that lead to the US housing crisis. The main gist is that nimbyism has prevented us from building the housing, energy, and transportation that we need. Demsas makes some hot takes that actually make a lot of sense: Americans have to vote too much which causes disinterest and that local government has too much power over development which allows small loud voices to disrupt important projects.

[David Auth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve been reading about urban and housing policy for the better part of 4 years now and this book is probably the best. It did a really great job blending in ideas about democracy, and looking at what voices matter at different scales. “When we collectively feel entitled to hold the government accountable, that's democracy. But when individuals do, that's something else: institutional capture.”

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think Jerusalem Demsas is the best journalist writing about housing and homelessness in America today. This is a reprint of some of her articles in The Atlantic - so if you read The Atlantic, there might be nothing new here for you.

But if you don't, and you care about housing affordability and the homeless crisis check this book out.