The economist who called the housing crisis in 1981

Larry Katz, known today as a legendary labor economist, had a precocious side quest in urban economics as an incredibly incisive observer of the downzoning crisis that hit the Bay Area in the 1970s. His Commencement speech on housing at Berkeley recently did rounds on Twitter, but his 1981 article on how growth control regulations in San Francisco drove home prices from near the national median to the highest in the country, in just a decade, goes into even more detail (screenshots there, original is paywalled). Beyond Katz’s direct intellectual contribution, this hauntingly-contemporary time capsule is an important rebuttal to recent and troubling claims that housing underproduction in high-demand US cities only began after single family mortgage underwriting tightened in 2008. It’s important to understand the superstar city zoning crisis, and the roots of the YIMBY academic literature, both date back decades before 2008. YIMBYs should be proud to stand on the shoulders of giants, but also humbled to know simply having the correct answer is not enough to win alone.