The Unassuming Economist

From a post by M. Nolan Gray:

“After a lot of hard work by activists, America’s political class has finally started to accept that we are in a housing crisis that is ruining everything. But what do we mean when we talk about a housing crisis? The reality is that housing market conditions are quite varied across the United States. There is not one single crisis, but three different varieties of housing crisis that require three different policy responses.

• Housing Shortage Crisis: These are the places where there is simply too little housing, of every variety, everywhere in the city. In these places, we urgently need to build more housing, in any form.
• Housing Inaccessibility Crisis: These are the places where housing is cheap by national standards, yet still inaccessible due to low local incomes. In these places, the near-term fix is to build subsidized deed-restricted affordable housing and expand access to housing choice vouchers. The long-term fix is to create the conditions for economic revitalization.”

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