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.

This is the first episode of our series on misaligned incentives in housing policy. Michael Eliason shares insights from his book, Building for People, on building code reforms and eco-district redevelopment projects throughout Europe.

Show notes:

• Eliason, M. (2024). Building for People: Designing Livable, Affordable, Low-Carbon Communities. Island Press.
• Youtube video of Vauban, an eco-district in Freiburg, Germany.
• City of Paris website on the Clichy-Batignolles eco-district, with photos.
• Episode 59 of UCLA Housing Voice, on the Costs of Discretion with Paavo Monkkonen and Mike Manville.
• Google Maps view of the Confluence eco-district in Lyon, France and the neighborhood directly to the north.
• Episode 14 of UCLA Housing Voice, on Family-Friendly Urbanism with Louis Thomas.
• Check out Stephen Smith’s single-stair and elevator reform tracker at the Center for Building in North America website.

Housing vouchers provide critical assistance to low-income renters, but roughly 40% of vouchers go unused, in part due to difficulty finding landlords to accept them. Vincent Reina shares findings from a pilot program that instead gives cash assistance directly to tenants.

Abstract:

This article examines a new rental assistance program in Philadelphia, called PHLHousing+, that disburses unconditional cash payments directly to tenants to eliminate their housing cost burden. The program is designed as a 2.5-year randomized controlled trial that aims to test the impact of direct- to-tenant cash assistance on household outcomes compared with traditional housing vouchers. The motivations for the program range from the need for more flexible tools that respond to the diverse needs of low-income renters to the desire for a robust evidence base on effective policies to improve household outcomes. The article also discusses the evolution of the idea behind PHLHousing+ before the COVID-19 pandemic through to its development, using knowledge obtained from upscaling local pandemic emergency rental assistance programs. Finally, the article describes the program’s implementation, including participant enrollment, strategies to minimize benefits loss, and cash disbursement mechanisms. It reflects on the lessons learned throughout this process, such as the importance of flexible funding and a strong research-practice partnership. The goal is to provide guidance to those planning similar programs and inform local and national policy, especially on direct-to-tenant, cash-based housing assistance.

Show notes:

• Reina, V., Fowle, M., Jaffee, S., Mulbry, R., & Fortenberry, M. (2024). The Future of Rental Assistance. Cityscape, 26(2), 293-308.
• Reina, V., Jaffee, S., Fowle, M., Tanski, M., Mulberry, R., & Fortenberry, M. (2025). PHLHousing+: A Randomized Controlled Trial of a Cash-Based Alternative to the Housing Choice Voucher Program in Philadelphia, PA: Housing Outcomes in Year Two. Housing Initiative at Penn, Risk and Resilience Lab, and Philadelphia Housing Development Corporation.
  • And a link to the working paper here.
• Episode 17 of UCLA Housing Voice, on using fair market rents to improve housing vouchers with Rob Collinson.
• Episode 87 of UCLA Housing Voice, on housing voucher lease-up rates with Sarah Strochak.
• Episode 88 of UCLA Housing Voice, on improving voucher outcomes with Dionissi Aliprantis.
• Episode 65 of UCLA Housing Voice, on reducing homelessness with unconditional lump sum cash payments with Jiaying Zhao.
• Reina, V. J., O’Regan, K., Jang-Trettien, C., & Kurban, H. (2025). Expanding Access to Rental Assistance: What Do We Know and Where Do We Go From Here? Housing Policy Debate, 35(3), 552-568.

Our next interview will be out soon. In the meantime, we're asking for listener questions for a special recording celebrating our 100th episode)(!!), and ideas for a UCLA Housing Voice book club. Send 'em to shanephillips@ucla.edu.

Seattle’s low-rise multifamily zones have produced more than 20,000 townhomes over the past 30 years. Tobias Peter discusses the impacts on affordability, homeownership, and more — including lessons for other cities.

Show notes:

• Peter, T., Pinto, E., & Tracy, J. (2025). Low-Rise Multifamily and Housing Supply: A Case Study of Seattle. Journal of Housing Economics, 102082.
• The full catalog of AEI Housing Supply Case Studies.
• The Urban Institute study on upzoning effectiveness: Stacy, C., Davis, C., Freemark, Y. S., Lo, L., MacDonald, G., Zheng, V., & Pendall, R. (2023). Land-use reforms and housing costs: Does allowing for increased density lead to greater affordability? Urban Studies, 60(14), 2919-2940.
• AEI’s review and critique of the Urban Institute study: Peter, T., Tracy, J., & Pinto, E. (2024). Exposing Severe Methodological Gaps: A Critique of the Urban Institute's Panel Study on Land Use Reforms. American Enterprise Institute.
• Episode 77 of UCLA Housing Voice: Upzoning with Strings Attached with Jacob Krimmel and Maxence Valentin.

Episode Summary: Every year, more than two million low-income households receive rental assistance through the Housing Choice Voucher program, a federal program that helps renters afford housing on the private market. Currently, only about one-quarter of those eligible for vouchers receive them due to lack of program funding, though Democrats and the Biden administration have proposed expanding it. For our first episode of 2022, Rob Collinson of the University of Notre Dame joins us to talk about how we can get more bang for our buck from housing vouchers, the benefits and drawbacks of the program’s design, and how his research has already helped shape voucher policy reforms in metro areas across the U.S.