Scaling upward as opposed to outward would reduce costs, create lively streets and sidewalks, and allow for more human interactions, which, in turn, would provide opportunities for newcomers and immigrants to enter the middle class. Why hasn’t this happened, especially in the face of severe housing shortages in America’s busiest cities? Glaeser argues that a combination of empowered homeowners, hostile governments and inertia has made it nearly impossible for these cities to grow to their full potential.

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Decades in the making, the U.S. is facing a worsening housing shortage that is pushing housing prices and rents higher, and signs are pointing to it getting worse before it gets better. Experts estimate the country needs to add 2 million housing units per year to accommodate a population that grew by 7.4% over the past decade, according to the recently released 2020 U.S. census data. But last year, the country produced just 1.3 million units of housing, and construction prices, labor shortages and restrictive zoning and building codes are making it unlikely the gap is going to shrink anytime soon.

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The solution to high housing costs could not be simpler: Build more homes. To address housing affordability, many progressives have advocated subsidized affordable housing programs. These programs may not be adequate to generate sustained cost reductions, and they aren’t necessary. What will work with certainty are the laws of supply and demand. If we increase the supply of housing enough, prices will fall. Any solution to our infrastructure problems will likewise boil down to the need to build infrastructure. But to build housing and infrastructure, we must sweep aside the regulatory obstacles that stand in the way. In housing, zoning and related rules are the culprits behind the restricted supply of new homes.

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The United States, you might know by now, is in the throes of a housing crisis: Across the country, Americans are running out of affordable places to live. This was true even before the coronavirus swept the globe, when hundreds of thousands of Americans, if not millions, were homeless, nearly half of renters were cost-burdened, and close to two-thirds said they couldn’t afford to buy a home. And while some hoped last year that the pandemic would transform the nation’s cities into beacons of affordability, it’s a hope that in recent months has proved short lived.

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"We saw a lot of instances where apartments have gone in and brought in some sort of amenity with them whether it's trails or open space, they made the community more or less walkable in certain places. That in itself brings value when you bring new residents, new dollars to a community. So, that in itself is looked at as an investment. So, you have more support for your local retail, more support for your local arts community. You now have a bigger tax base because you've added more residents on a per-acre basis. There are studies like this all over the country that look at apartment impacts on home values and that's kind of some of the major takeaways in the literature.”

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Over the past decade-plus, that status quo has been one of growing inequities and displacement of often long-term low-income, Black, and Latinx residents. A few councilmembers stated that the Plan wouldn't adequately address equity until it is rewritten entirely, a process that is seemingly just around the corner.

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Economically discriminatory zoning policies - which say that you are not welcome in a community unless you can afford a single-family, sometimes on a large plot of land - are not part of a distant, disgraceful past. In most American cities, zoning laws prohibit the construction of relatively affordable homes - duplexes, triplexes, quads and larger multifamily units - on three quarters of residential land.

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Mr. Biden has the right goal - reducing regulatory barriers on new construction could have wide-ranging economic benefits that exceed anything else in his $2 trillion plan. But a competitive grant program is too weak to overcome the entrenched interests - like the homeowners who control local zoning boards and the wealthy residents of cooperatives who oppose all neighborhood change - that limit building in productive places.

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A new report shows that the construction of new affordable housing in D.C. and around the region isn't keeping pace with the goals set by regional leaders. The D.C. region is falling woefully behind its own goals for the construction of new affordable housing through 2030, according to a new analysis by the Housing Association of Nonprofit Developers. The organization’s new “Housing Indicator Tool,” a dashboard released Tuesday and exclusively previewed for the Washington Business Journal, shows that none of the 10 jurisdictions examined around Greater Washington met their goals for new affordable homebuilding in 2019 or 2020.

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Those who could afford the high-end apartments flying up all around Greater Washington in the pre-Covid days haven’t felt much of an effect, financially, from the pandemic. Meanwhile, those who were already struggling before the pandemic to afford D.C.’s steep rent prices, and the fewer among them who bore a mortgage, also happen to be the workers who watched their jobs disappear since: waiters, cooks, janitors, hotel workers — a healthy concentration of whom are people of color. Suddenly, even the affordable housing that developers are racing to build around the region has become out of reach for these renters.

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As protests in the District and nationwide call attention to police brutality and systemic racial inequities, advocates are calling on lawmakers to strengthen investments in budget areas that support community stability, rather than policing. Affordable housing is one such area that, if supported with robust, recurring funding, can provide long-term safety and stability, particularly for low-income communities and Black and brown communities facing skyrocketing housing prices in the District. DCFPI, along with our partners, urges the DC Council to make strong investments in public housing, affordable housing production, and preservation in the fiscal year (FY) 2021 budget.

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Affordable housing organizations are concerned primarily with helping as many low and moderate income households as possible achieve decent, affordable housing. But housing units do not exist in a vacuum; they affect the neighborhoods they are located in, as well as the lives of their residents. The mission statement of Minnesota Housing (stated above) reiterates the connections between housing, community, and quality of life. This study explores the ways in which affordable housing impacts such community and quality of life factors.

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The Office of Planning and Department of Housing and Community Development collaborated to produce the Housing Equity Report. The report provides an analysis of current affordable housing distribution and proposes specific targets to achieve Mayor Bowser’s bold goal of building 36,000 new homes, including 12,000 homes affordable to low-income residents, by 2025.

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Despite the lawsuits, media spotlight and conventional wisdom, affordable housing developments built in poor, heavily black communities can lead to greater racial and income integration, according to new research by Stanford economists. Such housing, funded by federal tax credits, also raises property values and lowers crime in surrounding neighborhoods as higher-income white residents move in, the researchers found.

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