UCLA Housing Voice

Why do many U.S. states build so few condos? Muhammad Alameldin explains the role of construction defect liability laws — and how to fix them. This is part 7 of our series on misaligned incentives in housing policy.Show notes:Alameldin, M., & Karlinsky, S. (2024). Construction Defect Liability in California: How Reform Could Increase Affordable Homeownership Opportunities. UC Berkeley Terner Center for Housing Innovation.Economic & Planning Systems. (2025). The Financial Impacts of Construction Defect Liability on Housing Development in California. Terner Center for Housing Innovation and the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR).Shoag, D., Romem, I., & Garcia, D. (2023). The First Step Is The Hardest: California’s Sliding Homeownership Ladder. UC Berkeley Terner Center for Housing Innovation.

In which types of homes are people safest from fires? Alex Horowitz shares research showing that multifamily is safer than single-family housing, newer homes are much safer than older homes, and that a single stairwell’s just as good as two. This is part 6 of our series on misaligned incentives in housing policy.Show notes:Rodnyansky, S., Horowitz, A., Clifford, L., Su, D., Smith, S., & Trivedi, S. (2025). Small Single-Stairway Apartment Buildings Have Strong Safety Record. Pew Charitable Trusts.Clifford, L., Rodnyansky, S., & Horowitz, A. (2025). Modern Multifamily Buildings Provide the Most Fire Protection. Pew Charitable Trusts.Baird-Remba, R., & Horowitz, A. (2025). How States and Cities Decimated Americans’ Lowest-Cost Housing Option. Pew Charitable Trusts.Wegmann, J., Baqai, A. N., & Conrad, J. (2023). Here Come the Tall Skinny Houses. Cityscape, 25(2), 171-202.UCLA Housing Voice episode 97, Single-Stair Buildings and Eco-Districts with Michael Eliason.

We’ve been grappling with trade-offs between stricter building codes and declining affordability for over 100 years. Benjamin Schneider helps us trace the history. This is part 5 of our series on misaligned incentives in housing policy.Show notes:Schneider, B. (2025). The Unfinished Metropolis: Igniting the City-Building Revolution. Island Press.Schneider, B. (2025 September 22). 106 Years Ago She Predicted Today’s Housing Crisis. What if we’d Listened? Planetizen. Wood, E. E. (1919). The Housing of the Unskilled Wage Earner: America's Next Problem. The MacMillan Company.Riis, J. A. (1890). How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York. Charles Scribner’s Sons.A brief history of tenements in the US.

Your city just legalized “missing middle” housing in its zoning code… now what? With Memphis, Tennessee, as a case study, John Zeanah and Andre D. Jones discuss the hidden non-zoning barriers to developing small apartment buildings — and how to lower them. This is part 4 of our series on misaligned incentives in housing policy.Show notes:Zeanah, J. (2025). Beyond Zoning: Hidden Code Barriers to Middle-Scale Housing. Center for Building in North America.Garcia, D., Carlton, I., Patterson, L., Strawn, J., & Metcalf, B. (2024). Making missing middle pencil: The math behind small-scale housing development. UC Berkeley Terner Center for Housing Innovation. Zeanah, J. (2022 January 12). Memphis, TN Amends Local Building Code to Allow up to Six Units Under Residential Building Code (IRC) to Enable Missing Middle Housing. Opticos Design. 'Beyond Zoning' Abstract:In recent years, planners have made zoning reform a key priority to enable housing supply, including “missing middle” housing … This article explores the barriers beyond zoning that can hold back development of middle-scale housing. It begins with a background on why these lesser-known codes matter for housing diversity. This is followed by a case study of a project in Memphis, highlighting the non-zoning barriers posed to the development of an infill collection of cottages and small apartment buildings, and how they were overcome. Next, the article delves into specific categories of barriers, from building codes and fire safety mandates to infrastructure and local ordinances, explaining how each can impede middle-scale housing projects. Finally, it concludes with an Action Steps for Planners section, offering implementable strategies for reforming codes and coordinating across departments to unlock middle-scale housing development.

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 WestSee remaining show notes and each host's favorite episodes at https://www.lewis.ucla.edu/2025/10/21/100-the-big-100-listener-questions-re-meet-the-hosts-and-book-club