This event is part four in the ongoing program series: Cracks in the YIMBY Consensus. 
Watch the recordings of parts 1-3 on our YouTube page.

This series is co-sponsored by the City Club of New York and by CNU NYC. 

The YIMBY account of America’s affordability crisis has become conventional wisdom: restrictive zoning is choking off the housing supply and preventing new construction from bringing prices down. This story has been amplified by journalists and real estate interests, gained political traction on both sides of the aisle, and become the justification for treating deregulation as an affordable housing strategy. But does the evidence support the YIMBY narrative?

In Part 4 of Cracks in the YIMBY Consensus, we speak with economic geographers Maximilian Buchholz (UC Berkeley) and Tom Kemeny (University of Toronto) about research done with Gregory Randolph (Georgia Tech) and Michael Storper (UCLA/LSE) that calls into question both the relation between zoning restrictions and rising housing prices, and the efficacy of deregulation in lowering them. The panelists will make the case that no realistic construction boom would provide significant relief to cost-burdened households in major U.S. cities, and they argue that income inequality offers a far better explanation than regulation for rising housing prices.  The panelists will consider the policy implications of their findings and of understanding the affordability crisis not as a problem of supply but as one of demand. 

Moderators:

Juan Rivero, Special Projects Director, Village Preservation 

Presenters:

Tom Kemeny is a Professor at the Munk School at the University of Toronto. His research is focused on cities and determinants of economic performance. Current projects include an investigation of the changing geography of wealth in the United States.

Max Buchholz is an Assistant Professor in the Department of City & Regional Planning at UC Berkeley. His work focuses on the drivers of disparities in economic opportunity across and within U.S. cities.