The hosts gather to celebrate the 100th episode of UCLA Housing Voice. We also answer listener questions and announce the first book for our book club.

Show notes:

• Appelbaum, Y. (2025). Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity. Penguin Random House.
• Appelbaum, Y. (2025 February 10). How Progressives Froze the American Dream. The Atlantic.
• Phillips, S. (2020). The Affordable City: Strategies for Putting Housing Within Reach (and Keeping it There). Island Press.
• Lens, M. C. (2024). Where the Hood At? Fifty Years of Change in Black Neighborhoods. Russell Sage Foundation.
• Lens, M. C., & Monkkonen, P. (2016). Do strict land use regulations make metropolitan areas more segregated by income? Journal of the American Planning Association, 82(1), 6-21.
• Manville, M., Monkkonen, P., & Lens, M. (2020). It’s time to end single-family zoning. Journal of the American Planning Association, 86(1), 106-112.
• Lee, A. E. (2023). The Policy and Politics of Highway Expansions. UC Davis. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/13x3n8zr.
• Chapelle, G. (2018). Does social housing crowd out private construction? (Working paper). Science Po.
• Elmendorf, C. S., Nall, C., & Oklobdzija, S. (2024). What state housing policies do voters want? Evidence from a platform-choice experiment. SSRN.
• https://www.hcd.ca.gov/housing-open-data-tools/statewide-housing-plan-dashboard
• https://easyreadernews.com/aes-ruling-against-redondo-may-open-door-to-builders-remedy-developments-statewide/
• Episode 81: How New Zealand Passed Its Ambitious Zoning Reforms with Eleanor West

See remaining show notes and each host's favorite episodes at https://www.lewis.ucla.edu/2025/10/22/100-the-big-100-listener-questions-re-meet-the-hosts-and-book-club/

North American buildings are built different — literally. Councilmember Jesse Zwick explains how the organization behind our unusual standards is built to fail, and he makes the case for a new approach. This is part 3 of our series on misaligned incentives in housing policy.

Show notes:

• Zwick, J. (2025). Out of Code: The Hidden Costs of US Building Standards.
• Episode 78 of UCLA Housing Voice, on the relationship between building height and construction costs (in the US).
• Wikipedia article on the Grenfell Tower fire in London.
• Stephen Smith’s Slate article about elevator building codes.
• Episode 98 of UCLA Housing Voice, on elevator building code in the US and Canada.
• Strong Towns article featuring the quote by Lawrence Veiller.

Elevators in the U.S. and Canada cost 3–5 times as much as elevators in other high-income countries. Stephen Smith explains why and how our well-intentioned elevator standards make cities less safe and accessible. This is part two of our series on misaligned incentives in housing policy.

Show notes:

• Smith, S. (2024). Elevators. Center for Building in North America.
• Part 1 of the Incentives Series, Single-Stair Buildings and Eco-Districts with Michael Eliason.

Abstract:

Americans make over 20 billion trips per year by elevator – twice the number of trips made by what people think of as mass transit. Despite the association between elevators and high-rises, the average elevator in the United States only has four landings, with elevators being as much a tool for convenience and accessibility as for able-bodied necessity.

But despite being the birthplace of the modern passenger elevator, the United States has fallen far behind its peers. Elevators in the United States have remained a fairly niche item in residential settings – expected in a high-rise or a big new mid-rise apartment building, but otherwise largely absent from the middle-class home. In absolute terms, the United States has fewer elevators than Spain – a country with one-seventh the population, and fewer than half the number of apartments.

And behind its lack of elevators, North America faces a crippling cost problem. The price to install an elevator in a new mid-rise building in the United States or Canada is now at least three times the cost in Western Europe or East Asia. Ongoing expenses like service contracts, periodic inspections, repairs, and modernizations are just as overpriced. High-income countries with strong labor movements and high safety standards from South Korea to Switzerland have found ways to install wheelchair-accessible elevators in mid-rise apartment buildings for around $50,000 each, even after adjusting for America’s typically higher general price levels. In the United States and Canada, on the other hand, these installations start at around $150,000 in even low-cost areas.