Escaping the housing trap

"Housing prices are at record highs, and millions of Americans are housing insecure in one form or another. Our housing markets are failing to provide the foundation for all Americans to have a dignified life they can afford in a good place with access to opportunity. Housing is a classic example of a "wicked problem" in planning and public policy: one involving a complex system with many interrelated parts, which does not yield to simple prescriptive fixes nor to pat ideological explanations. This is why, although nearly everyone agrees that we have a "housing crisis" today, there is no broad consensus on the nature and causes of that crisis, let alone what should be done about it. Escaping the housing trap will identify the tension between the "housing as a financial product" approach that dominates housing markets and the "housing as shelter" constraint that all of us as humans share. In the former, fiscal and monetary policy works to push the price up, combining with many local factors that also accelerate housing prices upward. Yet, to meet the shelter needs of Americans, prices need to come down, or at least be aligned with what people can broadly afford"--