Escaping the Housing Trap: A Strong Towns Presentation
Charles Marohn, founder of Strong Towns and speaker
Talk of a "housing crisis" pervades American cities—be it about off-the-charts rents in coastal cities or hyper-vacancy in the Rust Belt. These problems are symptoms of a deeper dysfunction. Over nearly a century, through often well-intended top-down policy interventions, we've turned a complex system that should be adaptive and self-correcting into one prone to a never-ending cycle of boom and bust, crises and overcorrections.
To address the dysfunction at the root of our housing problems, we need to shift our approach. We must move away from a model in which large developers and centralized financial institutions have unprecedented sway over what is built and where, to a more antifragile housing ecosystem in which the bar to entry is low, and every neighborhood can undergo incremental change over time.
A “Escaping the Housing Trap” presentation will help you understand the root causes of America's interrelated housing crises, and identify some rational responses that your city (and every city) can take.
Topics Covered in this Presentation:
A brief history of how we arrived at the current set of problems, beginning with how crucial federal housing policies instituted in the 1930s created a set of perverse incentives still affecting the market today.
A look at the 2008 housing market crash and its continuing aftermath.
Why housing markets today are so prone to boom and bust cycles.
How the incremental development of cities used to meet our housing needs, and why it no longer does.
Why our cities have a "trickle or fire hose" problem, in which a small minority of neighborhoods undergo rapid, dramatic transformation while the majority see only a trickle of needed investment.
How a growing number of places are adopting reforms that can break them out of the "trickle or fire hose" dynamic and make incremental housing development possible again.
Presentation length: This presentation typically takes 60 minutes, with optional time for Q&A.
Please contact Strong Towns' Pathfinder, Michelle Erfurt, if you have any questions about this presentation or hosting a Strong Towns event.
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