To me, it remains strange and interesting that many people who are superficially interested in lowering housing costs won’t believe that the obvious solution, known for centuries—since the time of Adam Smith—to high prices is greater supply. Those stories are important and need to be understood, and I found the magnitude of the rent hikes their protagonists were facing to be important, grounding context, but housing is an enormous issue and probably too big to cover comprehensively, so why not focus on one aspect. All Rights Reserved. A surprisingly engaging story about the push to build more housing. It's funny to see events I know well reexamined through another's eyes. Some chapters are primarily about the YIMBY movement, but one is about the efforts of suburban Hispanics to prevent increases, and others a. | The primary story in the book is that of Sonja Trauss, a former graduate student who early becomes dedicated to the cause of affordable housing and remains indefatigable in the cause. | Traces the deep roots of the anti-development & NIMBY phenomenon, and then the story of the current YIMBY movement. But while Shaw's book is a polemic, this book is a work of journalism, describing some activists and their points of view rather than making a detailed argument. © Copyright 2020 Kirkus Media LLC. I thought it glossed over the actual gentrification/displacement distinction, and wish it had made a stronger point about how lack of housing is a root. Told through an interwoven set of individual narratives. Rather, it is a combination memoir and extension of Atlantic columnist Kendi’s towering Stamped From the Beginning (2016) that leads readers through a taxonomy of racist thought to anti-racist action. Ashley Lukashevsky, by For generations, arriving in a major city was the first step toward the American Dream. Be the first to ask a question about Golden Gates. After devoting most of the book to talking, Oluo finishes with a chapter on action and its urgency. Another chapter discusses Factory_OS, a company that’s trying to do modular building. Like Randy Shaw's Generation Priced Out, this books is about the housing crisis in northern California. Unfortunately, building a housing factory is expensive up front, and the returns are spread across many years—leaving a wide space for bankruptcy. This book is a must-read for anyone who cares about the future of America’s cities.” — Ed Glaeser, author of Triumph of the City. are all major issues in certain areas, and the San Francisco Bay Area is certainly no stranger at all to this. If renters can figure out how supply and demand work—a big “if,” given anti-market bias—they’ll vote to expand the supply of housing. the build anything, everything, just fucking build, we-are-so-fucking-desperate camp. Change ). This is a fantastic book. Some people look at San Francisco and say "I know! PUBLIC POLICY Although my city is among the most dense places in the US, I have been really perplexed about the housing and zoning dramas that have been underway here. WorldCat is the world's largest library catalog, helping you find library materials online. Separate up to five addresses with commas (,). Some features of WorldCat will not be available. When he began college, “anti-Black racist ideas covered my freshman eyes like my orange contacts.” This unsparing honesty helps readers, both white and people of color, navigate this difficult intellectual territory.