Incorruptible Mass

Local Housing Policy

• Anna Callahan • Season 6 • Episode 15

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We open a series on housing by talking to Tatjana Meschede, the associate director of the Institute for Economic and Racial Equity and a professor at Brandeis University, about local zoning in towns all across Massachusetts. We talk about what affordable housing really means, the prejudices NIMBYism relies on, and what policies our state and communities have in place to encourage or discourage housing affordability.

You’re listening to Incorruptible Mass. Our goal is to help people transform state politics: we investigate why it’s so broken, imagine what we could have here in MA if we fixed it, and report on how you can get involved.

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ANNA

Hello and welcome to Incorruptible Mass. Our mission here is to help us all transform state politics because we know that we could have a state whose policies truly represent the needs of the 7 million residents of our beautiful commonwealth. And today we have a special guest to talk to us about housing. And in fact, this is our first of a number of episodes that we're going to be doing a deep dive into housing and housing policy.


And today we are going to be starting off with local housing policy. We'll then bring that to the state and national levels and that is really going to help us understand what the dynamics are of trying to pass housing policy here in Massachusetts and in other places as well. And our special guest is today Tatjana Meschede. And I hope I pronounce that right. But before we introduce our special guest, I am going to have my illustrious cohosts introduce themselves. And today I will start with Jordan.


JORDAN

Jordan Burke Powers, he/him. I live in Worcester, Massachusetts. I have many years working in progressive politics in and around the state and also politics nationally. And for the purposes of this conversation today I am also a student professor as I am in the institute where the professor is the associate director in my PhD studies. And I'm really excited to have the conversation.


ANNA

Jonathan.


JONATHAN

Jonathan Cohn, he/him/his, joining from the south end in Boston. I've been active for a little over a decade in different progressive issue and electoral campaigns in Boston and across the state.


ANNA

And I am Anna Callahan, she/her, coming at you from Medford where I am a city councilor. I have spent quite a few years working in local politics, but nationally across the country and very interested in this conversation, especially about how to change housing policy locally. And so today I am going to go ahead and have Tatjana Meschede introduce herself. She is the associate director of the Heller Schools Institute for Economic and Racial Equity. Take it away, Tatjana.


TATJANA

Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited about this topic. Of course. So in addition to being the director of our institute, I also teach at the Heller School. I'm a senior lecturer and I'm the housing expert at Heller. So clearly I'm teaching a housing policy class where I bring in a lot of, you know, my experience from Newton where I live and also very much engaged in the housing conversations here, especially around affordability. So and I also serve on the Fair Housing Committee here in Newton. Have been doing that for a number of years and I'm engaged in advocacy around creating affordable housing in a very affluent suburb. In a nutshell.


ANNA

Fantastic. Well the first thing I want to ask you is really about how you got started in housing policy.


TATJANA

That's an amazing question. It's a great question. And so I really have to go back more than three decades thinking about my very first day in this country. I came over over as a Fulbright scholar to California and my very first day I spent in Los Angeles and I was trying to visit friends who would not come to downtown LA to pick me up. So I had to wait for a bus, which in the end never came. New experience for a European coming from Germany where everything kind of goes on schedule. So I'm spending a few hours at the Greyhound bus station in downtown LA and I've been approached by this young woman who is asking me for money. And then I'm asking her, you know, what do you need money for? And then she tells me she's homeless. And I'm looking at her like, what does that mean? I had no idea what she meant. So I'm asking her, what does that mean? And she looks at me like, who is this lady coming from? But then, you know, I'm starting my studies in California and I hear homelessness over and over again. At that time, Germany was still divided and we didn't have, you know, the extent of homelessness that we are seeing now. Also in Europe didn't, wasn't, you know, there yet. So I got very curious and when I moved to Boston, I got very much engaged in homelessness research. I mean, I'm a trained researcher, so that's how I started out. And then of course, once you start with, you know, the very poor end of individuals facing extreme housing crises, and you're starting to ask all the other questions, how did we get here? What happened? And so forth. And the interesting piece for me is I'm actually using that in my teaching of housing policy. There is so much more media coverage lately on the housing crisis in the United States. And I think one reason for that is it's not about the very poor poor anymore. It's really about the middle class. And once in the middle class is being impacted by housing out of reach, you know, suddenly we have a lot, a lot of coverage. I bring that into my teaching. And I'm just saying, you know, what was discussed, you know, last week in the media, and there's so much, if you're just thinking about that, so. So, you know, things have gotten quite a bit worse over the like 30 something years I've been living in this country.


JONATHAN

One thing I'd be curious to ask when you're talking about research around, around homelessness over the years. What would you say is the biggest misconception that people have when it comes to, let's say, homelessness, homelessness prevention, etc.


TATJANA

That's a great question. So I did my dissertation on what we call the rough sleepers, the people who live on the streets. And we have about 100 in Boston who stay on the streets even in the very cold winter months. And so I've talked about this a lot with people and people think it's a choice that is so ingrained in people's minds that people are homeless because that is their choice. I've talked to a lot of people who are experiencing homelessness. I still have to meet somebody who said, yeah, today I decided to become homeless. And that is really what I'm doing. That is not happening. What's happening though, that people are putting proud that they are surviving, you know, homelessness, this very, very difficult condition. You can hear that, but it's not a choice. It is something that happens because of the system, the system failures that we have, you know, we see happening. Yeah.


ANNA

So let's go ahead and talk about Newton. So sounds like there's a lot of stuff happening in Newton around housing. We want to hear all about it. We want to hear like, what is the background, what have the change. What changes have been proposed? Let's start there.


TATJANA

So, so I got involved in Newton some like 15 years back when the then mayor decided not to allow a homeless project or a project for formerly homeless individuals to. To move into Newton and to live here. He just nixed it at the time with no reason. A really well planned, sort of amazingly supported in terms of services project did not happen in Newton. And that was just appalling. That's how it got in. And because of that project, advocacy groups organized around creating housing affordability and also issuing a lawsuit against the city of Newton through HUD using the fair housing principles. And in the end, the 10 units that were not permitted like 15 years ago were built and had to be built. So hang on.


ANNA

He was, he nixed it because of 10 units. 10. Wow. I mean, like when you were talking about it, I was like, oh yeah, you know, 200 units or whatever. You know, you're like 10 units. What?


TATJANA

Right. And, and you know, there was lots of pushback, you know, from the neighbors, you know, these are all rapists and my kids and like, you know, you know, on and on and on. Now the, the typical arguments that we hear when, you know, low income housing or Housing for formerly homeless individuals is being proposed in neighborhoods.


ANNA

Tiny little story from Medford. I was talking to a neighbor and she said that recently she went to just a public meeting where an affordable housing developer was going to take one lot. Like, it's a house lot, right? We're talking small. And they were gonna convert it. It's a large. A little bit large, but, like, we're talking about one home. They were gonna convert it into affordable housing for families. It was probably gonna be like three or four units. And she was so disappointed in her neighbors because people were like, we don't want those people here. And she was like, what are you talking. They're like families. We're like, right next to a school.


TATJANA

This is.


ANNA

What are you talking about? So, you know, it's all over, right?


TATJANA

It's all over. Definitely. Yeah. But, you know, this experience definitely incentivized a lot of people to organize around affordable housing. And unfortunately, in our last elections, the pushback came in. So we had very kind of progressive councillors who really tried to go beyond what was mandated from the state. You know, the MBTA housing.


ANNA

Can you tell us specifically what they had proposed? Like, a little bit more detail?


TATJANA

Okay, so as part of the MBTA housing and Jordan, you might chime in into that as well, since you know that policy. So cities and towns who are around public transportation were required to just zone for the potential of building housing. This was not required, but just zoning with the potential to build something in the future. And Newton already had engaged in a similar project in changing its zoning around the village center. So Newton is really a city that was built from 13 different villages. So we have a number of village centers where also the T. The Green Line happens to have stopped, or the commuter rail as well. So New Dory had started this process and it was actually going beyond what was required from the state law, the MBTA housing law. And there was so much pushback that they, in the end, could not deliver what they, the city council, the majority in the city council had proposed. And then came the election, and of course, all those proponents were voted out. So there's always this. This pushback, right?


JONATHAN

From my knowledge, from friends and Newton as well, that you've had this, like the situation where one particular ward has started turning out much heavily, more heavily now against it and like the bastion of, let's say conservative and NIMBY votes in Newton, where like the terrible what kind of consequence were now that now they start showing up a lot.


TATJANA

Right? And in the last moment, it's like no, we never heard anything about it. Newton only had talked about it for five years. Right, but. And then, you know, the voices become very, very loud and then, you know, people get scared and then they vote accordingly.


JORDAN

And I think it's also important to remember that the other piece to this is that Newton has a, it has a system that like, it has a system that enables that type of, that type of sort of nimbyism. Like this is a way in which systems sort of enforce themselves. So it's not like I think, right. Newton has where the city votes on the local people. So your ward people have at large have the whole city votes. And that's a system that was created literally to take away power from Irish people and, and, and poor people and to a lesser black people. Because not so much Newton, but like especially Irish people, ironically. And. But it's. The system is like, basically we need to ensure that the right types of people get elected. So those at large systems are created to diffuse the power of local, of like the sort of local neighborhoods to elect people that they want. So like, also I think it's important how the system has like helped that for one ward starts to turn out and it just sort of hurts the whole city. So you. So that people who aren't even representing that part of the city are having more of a say. They have an. They have a larger say.


JONATHAN

Yeah, because you have like Newton has its like incredibly large city council of 24 with eight of them ward voted on by the ward and then 16 you. Where you have to live in the ward, but you can vote that. The whole city votes for them. So it especially exacerbates that, that once like one of the conservative parts of the city starts really outperforming its turnout. That can lead to multiple candidates across the city with no actual connection directly to that ward itself being impacted.


ANNA

And I gotta jump in here because what you're talking about sounds so similar to what's happening in Medford. So we spent like five years. We. I was actually not. So I'm only on the city council for the last 18, 19 months. But before I got on board, the mayor and the city council and you know, the staff and everything got involved in these planning projects. So they created an affordable like a housing production plan, a climate plan. Then those got included into a comprehensive plan for the whole city. And all of these lay out like increasing, you know, the amount of housing production. And then they hired an expensive consultant to work with the city council for 18 months. And the, the head of the Planning department is also at every single meeting we meet. And so when I started, since I started, we have been meeting every two weeks with the consultants and the, the head staff people of the administration to take these plans and implement them in zoning, which does mean, like, these slight increases for most of the city. Not everywhere, but most of the city have a slight increase in the density. And, you know, just in the last few months, there has been this real, you know, loud set of voices coming out and the mayor herself suddenly started talking as if, you know, oh, I only heard about zoning. This is the same mayor who made all these plans, just heard about zoning two weeks ago from a resident and is blasting the whole city with text messages, you know, scary text messages about the scary zoning. And it's like, it is bonkers down here in Medford. I don't, I don't really understand what is happening because I was just doing what I was told the city wanted to do, but suddenly this giant NIMBY wave is like, you know, coming to all the meetings. So who knows what's going to happen? And the mayor is demanding that we undo all of the zoning that we already passed 18 months ago.


JORDAN

I think it's also, it's. It's important to note because I think, I think so this is the thing I'm hoping to do my dissertation on is, is this is the messages, not so much that policy itself, but like how there's this desire and people understand that there needs to be more housing. And though people will say this, I'm on the zoning board in Worcester, they'll say, I understand there needs to be more zoning, but. And then they'll, and then they'll immediately talk about why we shouldn't have housing there. Wherever it is, just can't be there. And, and the underlining things about it is always a fear of, of, of the other. And those. The. The fear is entirely racialized and genderized as fear of, of black women. It's. And it's just like this, this idea of like unwashed black women who are going to be on welfare, who are going to like, do like, terrible things to your neighbors and like, bring down the things. And like, I always tell people, like, name a place where the housing cost has gone down. Like, I'm sure there's one or two place, but it's not happening. Like, housing prices are going up, land is going up. This is not a reality. And also, like, who's going to move in? Our families who want to be your kids who can't afford to live in your. In your town anymore, which is I think, just like. Like the, the under. Even. Even as it's. I think it's important because people don't think about how they think about it. Right? They're not. I don't think that people are thinking like, oh, I don't want. Like, it's just those people. It's an un. It's like a thing. It's a message in the background of somebody. They don't. They can't quite see, but it's like dark and scary and unsure. And there's all. And those are all those ideas come from the 1930s, 40s and 50s when the government worked to try to build the suburbs, which make literally no sense because people used to live in cities two minutes from their jobs and they were told they need to live far away from their jobs. And part of that is a constant. It was a purposeful effort to tell people that people who live in apartments, actually that even gets in the 1900s. But people who live in the apartments are black people, immigrants, scary people. If you look at the fight to get to. So in. In Massachusetts, it's actually a. It's. You can't build a three decker in 350 of the 351 towns, Somerville is the only place you can build a three decker. And the changing and zoning laws were all about how it was a place where you'd lose your husband to women and how like immigrants and dark people, all these images are the same. So sorry, Jonathan, but just really quickly, I just want to say that like, there's. There's. There's an underlining thing that's happening that just doesn't get examined. But I think it's actually important because all of this is, of course, nonsense.


JONATHAN

I was going to ask what's also so striking to me with a lot of the way in which you have the rhetoric that exists in places around building affordable, kind of zoned affordable housing. Is that typically what counts as affordable housing? But like in Massachusetts standards, which is going to be based on area median income. And you have a very affluent, like kind of. You have very affluent areas. So the median income is going to be much higher than in other places. Is not even like. It's both like prop. Like the kind of. That racialization and problemization of it is both like deeply wrong in its own way, but it's also like completely disconnected from any semblance of reality of what that house, the housing that built is even like who is even going to live there. Because if it's like somebody who makes like what's effectively middle, like a middle income gets into an affordable housing unit. But it gets talked about as though some type of like scary thing going to happen.


TATJANA

I mean, you really bring up an important point here because what do we mean by affordability? We don't mean those who really, you know, have very little income. We don't talk about the homeless families who need housing. We're not talking about any of those. We're talking about 60, 80 or 100% of area median income. And those are solid middle class incomes. They are not, you know, incomes for people who make a little less. So that's really important. So the term affordability is even actually misleading. It's like, you know, below market rate would be a much better term than to make it affordable.


ANNA

Yeah, I, I also, I have to bring up something that, that came up in Medford. So I'm working on trying to get some home sharing happening, which is where it's like a matchmaking service between older homeowners and younger folks who can do some mix of paying rent and maybe helping around the house. And what came up, because we were, I was trying to think like, oh, could we use some of the affordable housing funding to fund like a city half staff person to do some of this matchmaking? And, and what came out is you cannot. Rooms do not count as housing. Right. So, and that, that's attached to the, the area median income because in Medford and Somerville you have a lot of units where it's like four bedrooms or five bedrooms. So. And it's not a family living there, it's a bunch of young professionals. So what does that mean? That means you have like four young professionals who are all earning $40,000 each, and yet that's a household. And so that turns the area median income into $120,000. Did I say four or three? Wait, that's $160,000 because it's a household. And so, and because rooms are not counted as, as housing. So in our area, even the area median income is this really inflated number because it does not match what we think a household means. Like each one of those single people is earning $40,000 and they're not married. They're not, you know, they're not a family. Those people probably aren't sharing food and you know, all those things are probably just living on their own. But the only way they can afford a room is to share with other people. Because of the way that our housing is architecturally and you know, the density and everything else. So even the area median income is really pretty inflated compared to what people actually do earn. And so then when you layer on the fact that, oh, you know, we're building like 80% of AMI housing, like I discovered in like just crunching some numbers that the city of Medford is going to have a developer and they're going to, you know, in their hundred units they're going to build 15 or 20 that are 80% AMI. That 80% AMI high is more than the average cost of a unit of that size in Medford.


TATJANA

Oh wow.


ANNA

Mind boggling.


JORDAN

Yeah, yeah, that's same in Worcester. That's the same in Worcester. We have, you know, we have people opposing, quote unquote affordable units which are, which. There's an affordable unit in downtown Worcester which is three times the rent that we have. So we own a three decker. That's three times the rent that we charge.


ANNA

Three times.


JORDAN

Three times it's affordable and it's. Right, like just to that point. Yeah, it's just what are we doing? Right, right.


ANNA

What are we doing?


JORDAN

So Tatjana, I'd love for you to talk a little bit about what's been happening since, you know, with. So obviously there's been pushback against sort of a desire for Newton. What sort of, what have, what's been going on to sort of organize against that sort of pushback and how do we think about that for people who are listening, who are in other towns and other places who are thinking about their own housing policy problems.


TATJANA

So there are definitely groups organizing around bringing good housing examples into the community. So it's really addressing the fear factor that we just talked about. Right. Or you think about, you know, look at this, this is beautiful. Look at the people living here. Just, you know, taking away that, you know, who are all these people who are suddenly going to, you know, come in here and taking over. Which of course is not happening. Most of Newton is zoned single family housing. So even with the, you know, the change around the village centers, so there's very few pockets of potential change and you know, how much that is going to really happen we'll see in the future. So it's really about coming in with, with good examples from, from elsewhere to, to just, you know, talk to people who are concerned within Newton. I'm also starting a project with actually a lawyer who has been doing extremely affordable housing production. So really we're talking about 30% in lower homeless family in Newton for decades. She's amazing. You should invite her to your program. Actually, I was just talking to her yesterday, I'm like, she's so we're really trying to do a project around engaging people in the so called affordable units, bring them together, you know, doing a survey together with them and then really incentivize them to show up for all the meetings. You know, there's so much going on and we know who's showing up to the city council meetings and all the committee meetings. You know, it's, you know, the older white homeowners, it's really, I mean Newton has about 30% rental to 70% home ownership, but you know, the renters don't show up in general. So we're really trying to also work on at that end to at least you know, trying to organize or help people organize and who are the low income end.


JONATHAN

And I think that dynamic of like who shows up is such a core thing when it comes to housing policy because of when you realize that so much of politics, politics is based on perception that even if like it is clear that if you were to survey all people, you'd get a different outcome. If it's the people who are constantly showing up view one thing, that's what politicians think. That's how they view the entirety of the area that they represent and will influence them to vote accordingly.


ANNA

Yeah, I'm really curious. You know, you are a professor, you teach, and you also are clearly an activist and you, you work like on the ground in your city. I'd love to hear a little bit about how those two kind of intermix. Like how does your, your activism inform your, you know, your research and your, your teachings. But also how does your research affect your activism?


TATJANA

Well, you know, I'm so happy that I'm can be in both spaces. So it is really so what I'm doing in Newton. And as Jordan knows, I really bring into the housing policy class. I mean I bring people in, I bring topics in, I bring examples. So that really makes it real. Whatever we would discussing in a more theoretical level as a, you know, as students and professors learning together makes it really real with amazing examples. And then, you know, in terms of where my research, my research is often participatory. So it's really important for me that when I do research in the social policy field, which is my field, that I really start on the ground and that the research is really informed by what's happening and then of course bringing it back. So people who help me inform my research can then actually use what the results are in them. So it's really like a cycle or Circle. Nice.


ANNA

Okay, I want us to start talking about Massachusetts and nationwide estuff. Let's, let's do Massachusetts first. Unless, Jordan, do you have something to add before we go on and do that?


JORDAN

You should do a mid roll real quick and then we should, and then we should do. And then we should talk about Massachusetts. It's a good place for a mid roll.


ANNA

Jordan, you just volunteered yourself. Do the mid roll.


JORDAN

Oh, I'm good to the mid roll. Okay. Yes. Thank you everyone for listening. So as you know, the people you see appear here are not paid, but there are lovely people who you don't see who make this podcast possible. And they are, and we, we take very seriously paying them, as you can tell from this conversation, making sure that they're paid well. And so that is only possible if you donate, if you share and listen. So please do donate if you are in a position to do so. We absolutely appreciate it and the people who you don't see very much appreciate it and do share this. Like this is not something that it should just in your ears or on your screen. It needs to get shared to grow. And so we depend on you to do that. So please do share it. Post it on Blue sky, share it on Instagram. There's a YouTube page you can share the YouTube page across. You know, we, we've seen some great growth on the podcast side, so do continue to help us grow on the podcast side. And we appreciate all of you. I get it all, Anna. I get it.


ANNA

Brilliant, fantastic, wonderful. Let's go ahead and talk about Massachusetts. So it's happening in Newton. Here it is, you can see it's happening here in Medford, nimby. Everybody kind of understands that it's, it's a real thing and it's very much related to housing and zoning and upzoning. What can you tell us about Massachusetts more generally?


TATJANA

Are you asking me?


ANNA

I am. We're gonna have the professor like we're gonna put you on the spot.


TATJANA

Right? I mean, I know it's, I mean Massachusetts has some, some amazing housing related policies that other states don't. I should, you know, definitely showcase those like the, the 40B, the requirement that, you know, cities have to build so called affordable housing if they don't have enough, you know, if they're under the 10% thresholds, that, that's an example that.


JONATHAN

For those, for our listeners who are not as familiar, because especially if you're coming from a place like Boston or probably, let's say like Cambridge or Somerville, you almost never actually hear that talked about locally.


ANNA

Do you mind what 40B is?


TATJANA

Yeah. The requirement for city and town to have affordable, affordable housing stock that is below 10%. That if builders come in and want to build affordable housing, they cannot say no. You know, and that is definitely a policy that I hear when I travel nationally. Being picked up a lot on housing expert as an amazing policy because other states don't have it. And then, you know, in addition to that, we have now the new MBTA housing. I think I forgot what the official title is that requires, you know, the zoning around the transportation hubs. So there's definitely some guidelines, you know, some good policies happening at the state level.


ANNA

I would say the ADUs is another one. Right. That all single family zones now must allow for ADUs. And that's an accessory dwelling unit. It's a. I think it's less than 900ft. Is that right? It just means that you could turn your attic or a garage or, you know, some other space in your home into like a. What do they call them? An in law. In law apartment or something like that.


TATJANA

You know, returning single family homes kind of into two families without having to change the zoning, which is really. No, it's great. So there are definitely some good things happening in terms of the challenges. I'm really gonna lean on Jordan and Jonathan because you guys might know more than I do.


JONATHAN

Jordan, you want to start?


JORDAN

I think the things you've named are the things, which is that we have good policies, but the zoning people push back locally on it all the time. People want housing, but they don't want it next to themselves. They repeat a lot of the sort of like old ideas from the 30s, 40s, 50s about who those. Why they can't have housing. Who are the people who's going to move in? What's going to happen to housing property? I hear that a lot. People say, like, my housing property is going to go down. When I was like, that does not happen. It would be great if it did happen someplace. It's totally unaffordable, but it's not happening. So it's just not going to happen. So, like, those are some things that we hear a lot. The story I always tell for folks around this is similar is like, you know, I. I'm on the zoning board and there was a part of the city which has. So I live in one of the poorest zip codes in the state. I love my neighbors. I actually find it amusing that people are just like, like, oh, it's so dangerous. I was like, I get they Bring me spices from places I've never been and local food and great sound. And I was just like, who are these, like, what is this hellscape you all think happening? It's like people look out for each other. Like, people are always asking, like my neighbors, who are. You know, some people are more transient because it's a lot of renters, but plenty of folks are just here and they're always like, you know, they're always asking how I'm doing, how Ella's doing. I got Nate, I got tomatoes the other day right off a thing because she just brought. She was like, I have extra. Do you want something? Like, I don't know. I just love it. I can't imagine, I can't imagine that sort of healthcare people imagine. But people imagine these terrible things when they hear multifamily housing. They hear affordable housing. They hear all of these, these things. And so, you know, so there's a poor part of the city. There was a brownfield that was totally, that was totally. That's. There's nothing there. It's abandoned. And somebody wanted to build affordable housing. And all of these people came to oppose it. And who lived in the neighborhood. And I was just like, who do you think is going to move in? Like, there's no. We're the people. They look like us, they are us. There's not other poorer people. Like, we. I just don't. Like, we're like, we're brown. Like, we're the brown poor people who live here. That's who's moving in. It was just bizarre.


ANNA

But you're saying even those people, right.


JORDAN

They came in opposing. Like, it's like, who's gonna move it? And like, you know, and so like, you know, I. It's just, it's just a weird thing that is just so embedded into our culture, this idea of like affordable, meaning poor people, which in fact, as we've all pointed out is like just like regular affordable just means like your kids who have middle class jobs could afford to live near you. Like, you know, and so I'd say that's, that's really a lot of the things, is that there's this gap between wanting more housing and people getting their needs to be more housing and the fact that people always oppose it locally in their neighborhoods. And I would, and I would say just like, it's. It's gonna be okay. Like I always tell people, like, 10 years from now, you're not even gonna remember that this got opposed because it's just gonna be normal. It's just gonna be, this is gonna be there and it's gonna be fine. And there's gonna be some family who maybe you don't always agree with, but they're gonna be fine.


TATJANA

We have an example in Newton too. It was like an old abandoned parking lot owned by the city, right. You know, up in arms about building, you know, some kind of mixed income housing. Everybody loves it now. It's beautiful as a plaza. It's a coffee shop. It has everything, you know, it's just like totally forgotten exactly what, what you're saying. So.


ANNA

Wow.


JONATHAN

What's interesting as well when I think about some of the stuff with density is whenever you see those studies that show about the kind of correlations between density and so like and politics and the way that if you look across the country, the areas where you see a correlation with like higher density areas being more likely to vote Democratic, lower density Republican. And there are many different, there are various things going on. But it's also interesting how the kind of the ways in which types of single family zoning can encourage a certain type of conservative politics. Because I think back with that, like where I grew up in the suburbs and then if you're growing up and that like you're in a development of single family houses, you really only view like local government as telling you what you can't do with your property. Rather than thinking of local government as like what are the collective investments that you're making to make you and all of the people who live around you be able to better do the, able to do the things that you want to do.


ANNA

This is something that cracks me up so much because I love the juxtaposition position of people who are like, how dare you allow more types of housing. That's communism. And it's like that's literally the opposite. That's like market capitalism. Like you're literally the complete opposite of what you're saying. It's so crazy. These conservative people who are like, how dare you allow people to do more things? You know?


TATJANA

Right. And that's exactly the problem why we have the crisis. We have not built enough for decades. If you look at the data, you know, we did build in some, you know, some years in the past and then everything went down and we have not caught up. And you know, if we, you know, and we really let it slide more and more by not building enough and not enough density.


JORDAN

And I just want to say as somebody who lives in a three decker, like density is great. Like I just say it's great. I love Having neighbors. My kid is literally hanging out with our second floor neighbors. Like it's a great thing. I would like, I just want to say that, like it's just such a weird juxtaposition. It doesn't, it doesn't mean it has to be for everyone. But like, you know, it's great. It's just like we should be building up, we should be building in community. We should be. We could be doing it better. We could be thinking about Barcelona styles where there's more, you know, shared community and gardens and ways for people to connect. So that doesn't just feel like blocks of ugly buildings. Like there's things that we could be doing better. But by and large, like it's just, it's fine. Like it's going to be, you know, like it's going to be fine. And so when we think about the state, I just think like it's easy to think about housing policy as like this big thing, but I think of it as like thousands of examples of little examples like this where just like every project gets stopped by paper cut after paper cut after paper cut so that it doesn't end up happening. So we had a really good project in a part of town that could easily get more high rises and should. And it had so much like paper cuts and again, an abandoned parking lot. Right. Similar thing that now it's gonna be another like outlay of a, a private corporate hospital system. Right. Like, so they're just like, oh, we're going to turn it. Which is a dying industry because literally it's for baby boomers. And then they'll. And then what? It'll be an abandoned, no longer health care system when there aren't enough baby boomers to keep it in service. And now you've built something for a short time on an, on an abandoned property that could have and should have and had a proposal for a good housing project and it got paper cut to death. And like that's the sort of thing that I think about. It's just thousands of those over and over and over and like all of. And so that's. And so that's our problem with housing policy. It's not one size fits all problem. It's a lot of little misdecisions to not build housing which has caused this problem.


ANNA

So I know we're running out of time. Anybody have some, some words about Nash? I could talk forever about national housing issues and I don't want to get into it. Cause it's pretty deep. But any thoughts about tying this into national or should we hold that for a future episode?


JORDAN

You should say what you want to say and tease it for a future episode.


ANNA

Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, I will just tease for a future episode that I was talking to city councilors in, like, San Antonio and Dallas, Texas, talking about how they built and built. And actually in Texas, housing prices are, in fact, going down. Like, down, meaning either down or not going up or whatever. Like, so there really is. We are finally, they feel like, thumbs up. We did it. Housing is coming closer to being affordable for people. And then I would also talk about places like St. Louis, Cleveland, Detroit, where there's tons of housing that gets abandoned because of how we just allow jobs to, like, you know, disappear completely from cities. We abandoned small towns, and they're all ghost towns. So housing, I think, is a very complex nationally, is a very complex issue on national stuff.


JONATHAN

One thing that could be a great future topic as well is looking at public housing in the way that the federal government largely, like, just doesn't invest in public housing. Does it benefit that it used to? And that. That is like, a very big gap in the. In the housing ecosystem. Because if you look at that, there are, like, there are those who can afford a market rate of housing that the market provide. They're kind of the world of, like, affordable units where you're trying to help people push something below the market to expand, who can afford it. And there are those for whom that would also might kind of be given competition for that and everything. And having a public housing supply is also helps with just creating the supply.


TATJANA

Right. And also a very important racial overlay because public housing is built for white mothers. And that shifted.


JONATHAN

Yeah.


ANNA

Wow. So I am. I have to say, I'm so excited for our future episodes. But, Tatjana, so wonderful to have you here. Thank you so much for your time, for all the work that you do, both teaching and doing research, but also on the ground. Like, we love having folks on the ground be able to talk about what's actually happening. Jordan sporting the T shirt for Brandeis. Awesome, awesome, awesome. And we thank all of our listeners and followers for forwarding the show, for donating to the show, and we look forward to chatting with you all next week.