Why You Can't Afford a Home

The housing crisis is poorly understood, but we know how it affects us.

Those who had the foresight or the luck of buying or inheriting a home decades ago, say, “What’s the crisis?” But for those who are working and trying to buy a home in 2024, the crisis is very real and it only gets worse. If interest rates go up, homes get less affordable. If interest rates go down, homes get less affordable. States try to reduce regulations, but face opposition and delays at the local level. NIMBYs and YIMBYs face off in planning meetings and city council meetings. A few neighbors, with time on their hands, wield extraordinary veto power over granny units and developments, frustrating builders, planners and developers, forcing delays and driving up prices.

A new book, by Jerusalem Demsas explains how we got here. It’s not as simple as selfish NIMBYs (who support new housing in theory, but oppose the latest new house: Not In My Back Yard) vs. YIMBYs (Yes In My Back Yard). As Demsas writes in an article in the Atlantic, “

Pointing out that a billionaire is trying to thwart the construction of townhouses in his affluent neighborhood is useful, but even more useful is understanding why he might succeed…NIMBYs are a sideshow. A democracy will always have people with different values. The problem is that the game is rigged in their favor.
The Labyrinthine Rules That Created a Housing Crisis, By Jerusalem Demsas

The Article:

Zoning ordinances and other land-use regulations or zoning ordinances reach far beyond the surface-level goal of preserving health and safety. Instead, they reveal a legal regime stealthily enforcing an archaic set of aesthetic and moral preferences. Preferences that flourished out of a desire to separate Americans by race have evolved into a labyrinthine, exclusionary, and localized system that is at the core of the housing crisis—and very few people know about it.

In America, we’ve delegated the power over how our land is used to the local level, and seeded the process with various veto points. We’ve done this under the misguided assumption that decentralization will make the process more democratic. In reality, this system has resulted in stasis and sclerosis, empowering small numbers of unrepresentative people and organizations to determine what our towns and cities look like and preventing our democratically elected representatives from planning for the future…

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The Book:

A rigorously reported anthology on how local politics have fueled a generation-defining national emergency. An Atlantic Edition, featuring long-form journalism by Atlantic writers, drawn from contemporary articles or classic storytelling from the magazine’s 167-year archive. In this precise collection, Atlantic staff writer Jerusalem Demsas turns her expertise and keen eye to the housing shortage, one of our country’s most dire yet widely misunderstood public frustrations. Demsas examines how local democracies have become coconspirators in the anti-development aspirations of the very few, at the hefty expense of the many. These essays identify the inefficiencies and irrationalities of contemporary land-use politics and the stages they play out on, offering readers a refreshing and accessible guide to a generational crisis.

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