The public housing miracle that never happened

I like Jerusalem Demsas’s writing on basically any topic, but she’s at her best when she can dive into housing policy. Case in point: this devastating takedown of a deeply wrongheaded op-ed and report from two Vanderbilt law professors who tried to argue that land use and zoning rules are a distraction from building out massive quantities of public housing the way the US did in World War II.

Demsas’s response is twofold: first, any way you look at it, the primary cause of high housing costs in the US is the plethora of laws and regulations that reduce the supply of housing available. Second, that public housing buildout during World War II? It mostly built purposefully sub-standard homes where families had to share bathrooms and kitchens. Because it was literally World War II, people accepted the sacrifice. But after the war, when we needed permanent homes, it was time for the private sector to rip.