UCLA Housing Voice

In the 1970s and 80s, a tax revolt broke the property tax system in liberal states like California. David Schleicher shares how, in the 2020s, conservative states are joining the party. 
Read about the Lewis Center's work at lewis.ucla.edu.
Follow our Substack at uclahousingvoice.substack.com.
Email Shane at at shanephillips@ucla.edu and follow him on Bluesky and LinkedIn.
Show notes:
Schleicher, D. (2026). The Great American Property Tax Freak Out. Available at SSRN 7377158.
Episode 11 of UCLA Housing Voice: Land Value Tax Would Fix This with Lars Doucet.
Youngman, J. (2016). A Good Tax: Legal and Policy Issues for the Property Tax in the United States. Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
Shane’s Substack post, “What kinds of housing do kids live in?”
Fischel, W. A. (1989). Did" Serrano" Cause Proposition 13? National Tax Journal, 42(4), 465-473.
Martin, I. (2006). Does school finance litigation cause taxpayer revolt? Serrano and Proposition 13. Law & Society Review, 40(3), 525-558.
Malcolm Gladwell’s episode on Prop 13 on his podcast, Revisionist History.
Coven, J., Golder, S., Gupta, A., & Ndiaye, A. (2026). Property Taxes and Housing Allocation Under Financial Constraints (No. w35587). National Bureau of Economic Research.
Schleicher, D. (2024). Your House is Worth More Than They Think: The Strange Case of Property Tax Assessment Regressivity. Harv. J. on Legis., 62, 85.

Single-family rentals have a bad rap, but they also have underappreciated benefits. Tom Mayock shares how places with a bigger single-family rental stock provide better access to high quality schools  for disadvantaged kids.
Read about the Lewis Center's work at lewis.ucla.edu.
Follow our Substack at uclahousingvoice.substack.com.
Email Shane at at shanephillips@ucla.edu and follow him on Bluesky and LinkedIn.
Show notes:
Mayock, T., & Vosters, K. (2024). Single‐family rentals as a pathway for access to high‐performing public schools. Real Estate Economics.
Mayock, T., & Vosters, K. (2026). Educational achievement gains afforded by moving to single-family rentals. Journal of Housing Economics, 71, 102123.
Erdmann, K. (2024). Getting Corporate Money Out of Single-Family Homes Won’t Help the Housing Affordability Crisis. Mercatus Center, Georgetown University.
Owens, A., Reardon, S. F., & Jencks, C. (2016). Income segregation between schools and school districts. American Educational Research Journal, 53(4), 1159-1197.

Rapid rehousing provides short-term rental assistance to help people experiencing homelessness find market-rate housing. Brian Blackwell shares new research finding that it may be more effective than we thought.
Read about the Lewis Center's work at lewis.ucla.edu.
Follow our Substack at uclahousingvoice.substack.com.
Email Shane at at shanephillips@ucla.edu and follow him on Bluesky and LinkedIn.
Show notes:
Blackwell, B., & Gross, M. (2026). Does Rapid Re-Housing reduce homelessness? Journal of Urban Economics, 154, 103889.
Episode 64 of UCLA Housing Voice: Ending Family Homelessness with Beth Shinn.
Episode 66 of UCLA Housing Voice: Chronic Homelessness and Housing First with Tim Aubry.
Episode 87 of UCLA Housing Voice: Rental Voucher Lease-Up Rates with Sarah Strochak. 
Evans, W. N., Sullivan, J. X., & Wallskog, M. (2016). The impact of homelessness prevention programs on homelessness. Science, 353(6300), 694-699.
Cohen, E. (2024). Housing the homeless: the effect of placing single adults experiencing homelessness in housing programs on future homelessness and socioeconomic outcomes. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 16(2), 130-175.

Last time we talked about what preapproved building plans are and how the existing U.S. programs are going. This time we talked with Alkarim Devani and Eric Kronberg, two practitioners who are designing and implementing preapproved plan programs across North America.
Read about the Lewis Center's work at lewis.ucla.edu.
Follow our Substack at uclahousingvoice.substack.com.
Email Shane at at shanephillips@ucla.edu and follow him on Bluesky and LinkedIn.
Show notes:
Alkarim’s company, mddl.
Eric’s companies, Kronberg Urbanists + Architects and Inc Codes.
The Incremental Development Alliance.

Preapproved plan programs promise to speed up permitting and lower the cost of building new homes. How do they work—and are they working? Seva Rodnyansky shares findings from a review of more than 40 existing programs.
Read about the Lewis Center's work at lewis.ucla.edu.
Follow our Substack at uclahousingvoice.substack.com.
Email Shane at at shanephillips@ucla.edu and follow him on Bluesky and LinkedIn.
Show notes:
Rodnyansky, S., & Su, D. (2026). Preapproved Building Plans Help Cities Improve Housing Affordability. Pew Charitable Trusts.
Animated intro for The Irony of Fate, which depicts architects having their building designs rendered increasingly bland and uniform by Soviet bureaucrats.
The pattern book for New South Wales, Australia, with plans for buildings up to 216 units!
The province-specific housing catalog produced by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.